Film

The Squid and the Whale

Name: The Squid and the Whale
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 2005
Cast: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, William Baldwin

A precise, cringe-comic snapshot of one Brooklyn family's implosion, seen mostly through the eyes of two boys forced to referee their parents' failing marriage. Jeff Daniels is magnificently insufferable as a washed-up novelist; the humour is barbed, the pain is real, and nothing gets tied up neatly. Sharp, quick, and quietly devastating — for anyone who's ever watched adults behave worse than the kids.

TMDb rating

7.0

If you liked this

Kramer vs. Kramer1979

The original modern divorce drama, and still the gold standard: Dustin Hoffman's fumbling single father and Meryl Streep's departure map the same wreckage from the parents' side, with less irony and more raw feeling.

But It's earnest where Baumbach is acidic — less funny, more openly tearjerking, and its gender politics feel dated now.

The Royal Tenenbaums2001

Another brilliant, broken father wrecking his children's lives with grand gestures instead of love — but told through Wes Anderson's dollhouse symmetry and deadpan whimsy rather than handheld naturalism.

But The stylisation is the opposite of the Berkmans' scuzzy realism; if you wanted grit, this is candy-coloured artifice instead.

You Can Count on Me2000

Laura Linney again, this time as an adult still untangling the fallout of an unstable childhood with her wayward brother — funny, tender, and clear-eyed about how families keep failing each other kindly.

But Gentler and warmer than Baumbach's film; the wounds here are older and softer, not still actively bleeding.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Bicycle Thieves1948

Both films trust a child's watchful, wounded gaze to carry the story of a parent failing, without ever sentimentalising the child's pain.

Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist classic watches a father's failure through his son's eyes with the same unflinching honesty — no music cues telling you how to feel, just a child quietly absorbing an adult's collapse.

But Black and white, in Italian, and shot in the rubble of postwar Rome — a world away from Brooklyn brownstones and academic bickering.

Marriage Story2019

Baumbach's own later, sadder return to the same subject, now from the parents' side of the table — a devastating, generous portrait of a marriage ending in real time.

But It's longer, more polished, and considerably more heartbreaking; less comedy, more open wound.

The Ice Storm1997

Another well-off family quietly disintegrating, this time in 1970s Connecticut, with the same forensic eye for how adult selfishness curdles a household — cooler, sadder, and gorgeously composed.

But Ang Lee's tone is glacial and melancholic rather than sharp and funny; expect dread, not laughs.

The Savages2007

Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as adult siblings forced together by a parent's decline — the same prickly, articulate unhappiness, just aimed at an aging father instead of a divorcing one.

But Its subject is old age and caregiving, not childhood; a different, quieter kind of sadness.

Little Miss Sunshine2006

A family road-trip comedy that finds the same vein of dysfunction — a blowhard father, a marriage under strain, kids absorbing the fallout — but plays it broader and sunnier.

But Considerably more crowd-pleasing and sentimental; the ending forgives its characters more than Baumbach ever would.

Wonder Boys2000no page yet

Michael Douglas as another failing, self-mythologising writer trailing chaos behind him — funnier and shaggier than Bernard Berkman, but cut from exactly the same cloth of literary male vanity.

But It's a looser campus comedy with a genial, forgiving streak Baumbach's film pointedly refuses.

Igby Goes Down2002no page yet

A sharper-edged, more theatrical cousin: a teenage boy navigating a spectacularly dysfunctional, moneyed family with the same bruised wit and contempt for adult hypocrisy.

But It tips further into black comedy and melodrama; less naturalistic, more archly stylised in its cruelty.

Capturing the Friedmans2003

Same borough, same intellectual-Brooklyn-family unravelling caught in unflinching close-up, but with the awful weight of documentary fact instead of fiction's mercy.

A real Brooklyn family, filmed on their own home movies, coming apart under scandal and denial — the same claustrophobic intimacy and pitch-black humour, except every excruciating moment actually happened.

But It's a true-crime documentary with a genuinely disturbing criminal case at its centre — much darker, much more upsetting than a divorce comedy.

Arrested Development2003

Both dissect a pompous, self-mythologising father figure and the children warped by his ego, one through aching naturalism, the other through relentless farce.

A gloriously trashy, hyper-verbal sitcom about a spectacularly self-absorbed family imploding around a delusional patriarch — same DNA as the Berkmans, blown up into wall-to-wall farce and quotable one-liners.

But It's a laugh-track-free network sitcom built for repeat binging, not a single sitting of quiet devastation — tonally almost the opposite experience.