The Hollywood practice of ignoring a vast gap in a straight couple's ages when the older person is a man all but ruined a movie I would otherwise have liked.
That was Crazy Heart, in which Jeff Bridges, now 68, gets romantically involved with Maggie Gyllenhaal, now 40. Subtract 9 years to see what their ages were at the time.
Their age difference -- which nobody in the film so much as comments on, as I recall -- is bad enough. But what made it worse was that before he meets her he is shown hanging around with -- gasp! -- women his own age. His main problem -- and the main problem in his relationship with Maggie -- is that he's an alcoholic. But to show how low this washed-up has-been has fallen, he sleeps with a woman played by Beth Grant, an actress born the same year Jeff Bridges was. (YMMV, but I felt it was a pretty strong subtext.)
Maggie comes along -- the most timid and naive 30-something "journalist" ever; she wanted to write about him but had to have her uncle or somebody ask if he'd see her. And she's a huge fan and acts worshipful around him. So even though technically she should have been fairly mature, the script made her seem even younger than she actually was.
I'm not saying this could never happen in real life. It's just that movies frequently follow this pattern, whereas it's hard to imagine them making the same exact movie except that the woman musician is about 60 and the adoring man is about 30 and then act like age isn't even an issue. Though if they did, I would watch it! Again, I'm not saying age would necessarily have to be a big deal, I'm just saying that's not how movies work.
Other than that, I liked the movie. I like both Jeff and Maggie! The music was excellent! Colin Farrell played a country singer! The actual country singer who wrote the theme song has the same name as George Clooney's character in Up in the Air, which came out the same year.
But it also felt misogynistic or at least sexist/ageist, and that kind of wrecked it.
