Tiptoes (2003) and When a Movie is Used to Deliver a Message

There are many reasons for which a movie gets made.  Of course there is a monetary reason, which is why there are so many sequels, remakes, reboots, and such that are made every year.  It’s the main reason that anything gets made now.  Capitalism is a driving force in the film industry.  Another reason that a movie could get made is the artistry.  This is common in the lower budget independent films.  The script moved the people involved and they wanted to make it to share the wonder of it.  But the reason for making a movie that I want to get across in this writing is this.  Some movies are made to deliver a message.

Now, don’t misinterpret the topic at hand as being a topic only relevant to bad movies.  I do not mean to insinuate that at all.  There are underlying themes to almost all movies, good and bad.  I am not discussing themes, though, so I don’t know why I wrote that.  I am talking about direct messages.  These are things like “Racism is bad”, “Stop global warming”, or “Little people have a hard life.”  This is what I mean by a message.  I don’t mean coming of age movies.  That is not a direct message, but much more of a theme.  There is usually much more direct reference to a message.  Themes are more nuanced.

A message can both help and hurt a movie, depending on how well it is handled.  The good movies tend to focus on the message without overtly slapping people across the face with it.  The bad movies are the opposite.  This is where we come to this week’s movie as an example of how it can be poorly done.

Tiptoes is a drama that was released in 2003. It is about the problems of being a little person.  Please forgive me if I use any language that offends people.  I don’t mean to, but talking about this particular subject might bring some up.  Elaborating on the plot, the story is about how two twin brothers, one normal sized, and one that suffers from dwarfism, are dealing with their lives.  They come from a family of little people.  The tall brother knocks up his girlfriend, and their baby might be a dwarf.  He also hates the idea of being a dwarf.  The other brother is dealing with his life as a little person, his relationships, and his health issues.

There is no way that I can possibly say that the movie is good, and I’m not going to go into too many details about how it was bad.  Well, I’ll tell you this.  They cast Gary Oldman and Matthew McConaughey as the twins.  What I really want to discuss, though, is the message that is being forced through the entire movie.  The message is one of the examples that I gave earlier.  Little people have a hard life.

There are ways that this message could be conveyed during the runtime of a movie without it seeming like the filmmakers were trying to hammer it home to you.  Most of those were not present in this movie.  There would be a scene in which everything seemed fine and everyone was happy, then about halfway through, there would be a sudden shift to injuries caused by dwarfism, and a lot of exposition about that.  This happened a few times throughout the movie.  The scene would be going perfectly fine, and then the message of the movie would be forced into the scene.  The stark contrast only helped to take me out of the movie.

There is a huge difference between writing a movie about a specific message, and forcing the message into the movie.  A nuanced film would layer the message into the story, rather than cut it into the story.  The message would be a part of the story instead of what feels like an afterthought being added to the movie to keep the viewers informed.  The message should feel like a natural progression of the story, and not like a moment in which the story took a break to give a public service announcement.

Tiptoes could have been something better than it was.  It could have told about the problems that a little person faces in the everyday world through a story of struggle and pain.  However, all of the problems that little people face felt like a different movie compared to the family drama that was the core.  It pains me to watch a movie become as much of a disconnected mess as Tiptoes, simply because the filmmaker didn’t know how to properly share their message with the audience.  A message can be a great thing for a movie to have, if done right.  If done wrong, it can destroy a movie.

There are a couple of notes that I would like the make at the end here:

• If you would like to suggest a movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movie posts, message me on Twitter or leave a comment below.  I take all suggestions into consideration.
• Thank you to @BenLikesMovies for this week’s suggestion.