I love this movie so much

Just perfect...

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie starts out great. It is smart, sharp, and witty. I would highly recommend doing a quick reading on Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" on Wiki if you are unfamiliar with Whitman's work, what he was trying to accomplish, the criticism of it, as well as the fact he spent his whole life re-writing and expanding it. The movie had the feel of a five star indie in the beginning. Edward Norton, who I have yet to respect as an actor, plays two roles: Bill Kincaid and his twin brother Brad. Bill and Brad are both super intelligent. Brad, the smarter of the two when young, grows pot and enjoys life on the edge. Bill teaches classical philosophy at Brown University. Brad gets his girlfriend pregnant and in order to get Bill to come back to Oklahoma for the wedding, has his friend contact Bill and tell him that he is dead.Brad has other plans for Bill and plans to use him as an alibi. At this point the movie goes from great to WTF? The flick digresses into what appears to be a writer's inability to figure out how to end a story. Brad, as the smarter brother should of had a better scheme, one where everyone gets what they want, rather than do things by the seat of his pants. I was very disappointed in the writers for leading us down a path that would have made a great classic movie and then not being able to close the deal.

Bill Kincaid (Edward Norton) is a classics professor at Brown University. Bill's identical twin Brady is growing weed in Oklahoma. Local drug lord Pug Rothbaum (Richard Dreyfuss) is pressuring him to sell his business. Colleen is Brady's pregnant girlfriend (Melanie Lynskey). Daisy (Susan Sarandon) is their mother. Bill returns home after being told that Brady is killed. Brady isn't actually dead and he want Bill to be his decoy. Bill is unwilling until Brady's friend Janet (Keri Russell) shows up.Edward Norton does a relatively good job at the duo role acting. However the movie is not nearly good enough. It wants to be funny wacky caper but it never gets truly funny. There is a dark unlikeable edge to both characters. I actually dislike the professor character more the weed growing brother. Keri Russell has limited chemistry and the darker turns are done too carelessly by director/writer/actor Tim Blake Nelson.

Whilst there is nothing deep and meaningful here the plot and characters are plausible. The pace is about right as is the mix between humour and action. Thus Leaves of Grass is excellent entertainment (which is what movies are for) and a movie which I felt came close to nearly having it all(plot, comedy, acting and direction) in just the right doses: with one notable exception... the ending. Whilst often the hardest part to write in any story the ending here was neither necessary nor plausible. A prof of Classic's just wouldn't end up trying to hawk his dead brothers grow operation in order to tie up all the loose ends. So whilst it brings the film to a close, it's a bad close that lets down what up to then was pretty plausible. If it were up to me I would just cut the whole crossbow bit out and let the audience go home five minutes earlier and with a far better impression of the movie as a whole.

In spite of Edward Norton's overworked OK accent, he's a good enough actor to create two distinct characters-twins, one an ivy-league prof, the other a successful Okie pot grower. Everybody else rises to the occasion as well; even the script is good- it's the story that's the problem. If it's a comedy, it should stay a comedy IMHO, but this story, instead of developing a comedic premise into something that resolves in a comic fashion, depends on violent death to do that. So in its second half the story goes from building up a potentially hilarious situation into resolution by hollow-point ammunition. Much as did The Departed: Everybody shoots everybody else. The writer/director/actor, Tim Blake Nelson, got it off to a believable start, then seems to have thrown up his hands whenever the going got tricky, and just wiped out the troublesome characters. Deus ex machina lives, in the form of high-powered weaponry. I gave it a 5 because the acting (Edward Norton, T.B. Nelson, Keri Russell, Susan Sarandon) is first-rate. But the tone is completely inconsistent. I'm supposed to laugh at people getting their brains blown out? Maybe Nelson is trying to make a statement about "How we settle things down here in Oklahoma", or in The South, or in America? I don't know. It looks to me as if he just ran out of ideas.