Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional film

The trend to make characters in films wholly unlikable is one that I'm not sure I'll ever understand. There is a lot of ground to be gained by making characters 99 percent unlikable, with a glimmer of hope or redemption. But if a writer or director can't reel the audience in, all could be lost, as it is in Noah Baumbach's ("Mr. Jealousy," co-writer "The Life Aquatic") insufferable "The Squid and The Whale."\nI suppose "likable" is in the eye of the beholder. After watching "The Squid and The Whale," I took a little sigh of relief that I didn't know any of the characters in the movie. Oh sure, I know people like the characters in the movie -- egocentric, pretentious, immature -- but the ensemble cast is a special blend of repulsive. It's unfortunate, really, that the film never digs itself out of its own grave because it could've been something.\nThe film is said to be autobiographical, adapted from Baumbach's adolescence. The Berkmans are a middle-class family in 1980s Brooklyn, torn apart by a nasty divorce of a snobbish failed novelist (Jeff Daniels) and an unwoven wife reaching literary success (Laura Linney). Their divorce creates a strain on their children, teenaged Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and child Frank (Owen Kline), who then forge allegiances -- Walt sides with the father, and Frank goes with his mother.\n"The Squid and The Whale" is primarily a movie about two worlds clashing: mother against father, son against father and son against self, but mostly it's about intellectual against anti-intellectual. Snobs are bad, the film seems to keep saying. I wholeheartedly agree, which is why I can't help but note the hypocrisy of an intellectual film about how awful and destructive intellectuals are. \nThere are a few high points in this generally low movie. Daniels' performance is quite good, even if you hate him at the end. Much of the movie's dialogue is rather well written, although I don't know anyone who speaks like that. The idea of the squid and the whale is interesting as well, although it comes in far too late in the movie.\nUltimately, one of the thoughts I can't shake after seeing "The Squid and The Whale" is that maybe film was just the wrong medium for Baumbach to exorcise his demons. It might have been nice to read as a short story, one that I would perhaps spend less than an hour and a half enduring. As a movie though, something's gone wrong. It's just not welcoming or entertaining.