Distinctly directed divorce dramedy

Divorce affects kids in a lot of ways. Many children have been known to start blaming themselves while other kids undergo personality changes. Pre-teen binge drinking and ejaculating into library books, though not at the top of that list, are methods utilized in "The Squid and the Whale."

Director and writer Noah Baumbach, who recently co-wrote "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," shows the topic of divorce in an innovative light in "The Squid and the Whale," demonstrating how such an acrimonious subject affects an intellectual family in 1980's Brooklyn.

Jeff Daniels ("Dumb & Dumber") stars as the bungled father whose career as a writer is in a downward spiral, while his wife's (Laura Linney of "Mystic River") writing career is just beginning. The two acting veterans pull off a superb performance as two bickering divorc?(c)es who fight for their sons' love and acceptance.

However, the acting award has to go to the performances of the two brothers Frank and Walt Berkman (Owen Kline and Jesse Eisenberg). While they seem to get along better than most brothers do, they start separating as the older brother Walt sides with his father and Frank sides with his mother.

Each brother deals with the divorce in an extremely atypical way. Walt, being an adolescent in the midst of a high school career, goes about the film trying to decide whether his girlfriend is pretty enough to keep dating. He also spends his free time learning to play Pink Floyd's "Hey You" on the guitar in order to claim it as his own at his school's talent show.

Although Walt's actions are a bit eccentric, the course taken by his younger brother Frank is a far stranger one. Frank, a child on the cusp of his awkward teenage years, takes an immoderate approach to the phase.

Frank goes about the latter part of the film drinking cans of beer and whole glasses of whiskey while leaving self-love stains all over his middle school's lockers and library books.

Baumbach's approach to the film is similar to the style of friend and producer Wes Anderson ("The Royal Tenenbaums") in that he takes incredibly dramatic situations and dresses them up with a lot of dry wit and meticulous, distinguishing dialogue.

Baumbach also puts a personal spin on this melodrama, as it was based on his childhood experiences of dealing with his parents' divorce.

Though the viewer can't help but laugh at the outrageous, peculiar scenes and dialogue, Baumbach keeps the central theme of divorce darkly embedded throughout the narrative. He does not use many bright colors, keeping the mood of the film at a forlorn level.

There are many facets of this movie that help it stand out from a large crowd of independent films in the mainstream circuit. The dialogue alone makes this film better than half of the movies that have come out this year, but it lacks that extra flair that would have helped it to gain massive recognition.

Unlike Wes Anderson's drawn-out storylines, Baumbach chose to keep this film at a sleek 88 minute run time, which seems even shorter thanks to the presentation.

Although the film does have its faults, the distinctiveness and the theme makes the eight bucks and hour and a half well spent.