Flipped (2010)

The eight-year-old girl Juli is certain she has fallen in love the moment she first sees the new neighbor boy, Bryce. But in the very same moment, the boy feels only that some bothersome kid has moved in. Rob Reiner’s Flipped starts from precisely this mismatch. This structure, showing the same event alternately through the eyes of the two children, grants dimension to a simple first-love film and makes a small story set in a late-1950s American small town one you chew over for a long time. My rating is ★4.0.

What it’s about — A few years in which two mismatched hearts trade places

The film follows the few years in which Juli (Madeline Carroll) and Bryce (Callan McAuliffe) grow from elementary schoolers into middle schoolers. Juli likes Bryce steadily, but Bryce is busy avoiding her. Then, from one day on, the two hearts slowly begin to trade places. Around the time Juli comes to doubt what lies behind Bryce’s surface, Bryce finally realizes just how special a girl Juli is. As the title suggests, the film slowly builds up that moment when the two hearts flip.

Direction — The skill of rewinding the same scene through two viewpoints

The greatest virtue of Flipped lies in the skill of showing the same scene twice without making it tedious. After seeing an event through Juli’s narration, you see the same event again through Bryce’s narration, and the same dialogue and actions read with an entirely different meaning. When it is revealed that a moment of flutter for one was an embarrassment for the other, the audience naturally realizes how self-centered the human gaze is.

Rob Reiner revives the sensibility of the old neighborhood with warm color and tidy framing, without overdressing the period setting. The scene where Juli climbs the oldest fig tree in the neighborhood to gaze at the view, or the scene where the family sits around the table talking, are quiet yet clearly show the characters’ values. The approach of listening to the characters’ interiors instead of flashy direction firmly supports the whole film.

Performance — A spirited Juli and a grandfather who adds depth

Madeline Carroll renders Juli not as a girl simply in love but as a spirited child trying to see the world clearly with her own eyes. The process by which she realizes the beauty of the view from atop the tree and newly understands her parents’ lives is persuasive to a degree hard to believe is a child actor’s performance. Callan McAuliffe likewise captures well the subtle change of a boy wavering between cowardice and growth. Above all, the presence of John Mahoney, who plays Juli’s grandfather, adds depth to the film. His quiet lines, teaching his granddaughter how to see a person, become the emotional center of this film.

What the film says — A person is greater than the sum of their parts

What Flipped repeatedly emphasizes is that you must see a person as more than the sum of their parts. Juli’s grandfather says that some people are greater than the sum of their parts, and this sentence runs through the entire film. First love begins with appearances, but a true heart grows only when you come to see the whole of a person. Through the process by which the two children discover each other’s true selves, the film gently teaches that growing up is, in the end, gaining the ability to look more deeply into another.

Ratings & reception

By OMDb, the IMDb rating is 7.7 out of 10, reflecting high audience satisfaction. The Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, on the other hand, is 54 percent and the Metacritic score is 45 out of 100, a relatively lukewarm critical response. There were voices pointing to a somewhat simple, nostalgia-reliant development, but reviews praising the two-viewpoint structure and the warm sensibility continued steadily as well. It is also a work that has been reappraised by word of mouth over time.

Verdict

Flipped is a film that moves the heart without grand events. It honestly renders, through the eyes of two children, the first flutter and first disappointment everyone has felt at least once. The story of two people who remember the same time differently brings the essence of first love freshly to mind. As a quiet but long-lingering work, ★4.0 is not too much.

Recommended for

• Those who love a quiet, warm coming-of-age romance
• Anyone intrigued by a structure that views the same event from different viewpoints
• Those who want to fondly recall the memory of a first love