Picking Nits
Meticulous Amy cannot hide her money and loses it at miniature golf; her suicide plan is not believable; the FBI never interrogates her or presses on the box cutter; Nick going down on Amy with her underwear on; the cat on the stool amid broken glass and left home alone; Tanner Bolt winning Nick over by finding Tommy O'Hara online; the Mets hat instead of a Cardinals hat; media training ten minutes before the interview; Amy still covered in blood during the FBI interview; nobody hears the whispered 'kiss me' exchanges; the trust-fund math leaves them far from poor
In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 01:17:22Read transcript
- Amy spends three years framing Ben Affleck with diaries in different pens, a type-A maniac, yet absconds to a hotel and cannot figure out how to hide her money, unlike Josh Brolin (transcribed 'Josh Berlin') in No Country for Old Men pushing it through a vent; she just has a money belt.
- A defense: this is the first time Amy has faced anything actually hard, a super-privileged person isolated in her fancy New York community and then in Missouri who has never slept in a place like that or dealt with scurrilous people, and never considered being robbed because she is always the one taking advantage; others disagree, noting she is ready to get out when they show up and that keeping the money on you is the right move.
- Her mistake was getting excited about a hole in one at miniature golf; what kind of money belt falls off when you jump six inches in the air, and why play mini golf with those two fuckheads at all, except that she was getting comfortable in her new life; she slipped up, sloppy, right after making the long putt.
- Her suicide plan is not believed: she loved herself too much and was too much a fan of Amy to ever kill herself, going through the charade while really wanting a twelve-year victory lap about how awesomely she framed him.
- The FBI's incompetence: how is she not interrogated for seven hours instead of being let go because she seems tired, while covered in blood; the box cutter question is asked, but not by the agents, who fail to press on purpose; her look at Boney once she knows she has won is relished.
- Nobody mentioned that on the night they meet, after the sugar storm, Nick goes down on Amy without removing her underwear, despite sugar handprints on the headboard showing they have been at it a while, the classic leg-blocking framing and the reverse angle of him lifting her underwear to look; she also keeps her underwear on with Desi, defended as being ready to escape or a known preference of hers, with men's-magazine advice blamed for Nick.
- When Nick sweeps up the broken glass, Bleeker the cat sits on the stool, so he let him walk through glass, and he leaves the cat home alone rather than taking him to Go's house; Nick is sold on $100,000-retainer lawyer Tanner Bolt because Tanner finds Tommy O'Hara, a registered sex offender anyone could find online, who says women see it when they search him.
- The Mets hat should have been a Cardinals hat; how did the money belt fall off when she jumped; the gummy-bear media training with Tanner Bolt happens ten minutes before the interview and is very clearly a first run-through; Amy staying covered in blood through the FBI interrogation is disgusting and makes no sense, except as commitment to the bit that sets up the blood running off in the shower.
- Nobody hears what Nick whispers when they reunite or Amy's 'kiss me on the cheek' at the welcome-home event, and nobody sees that he does not do it, which one host enjoys as revealing the falseness of the whole presentation: life is fakery.
- When they fight about money she says her parents took almost all of the million-dollar trust fund, but the later figure of $870-something thousand leaves her at least $120,000, so they are not poor and should relax about the job depression; their whole life is a fake version of struggle in a beautiful McMansion with French doors in Missouri.
- Raised earlier, during what has aged best: Affleck puts on a Mets hat in the airport while wearing a Cardinals shirt for half the movie, which makes no sense unless he bought it there.