I saw J. Edgar last night with my friend Chloe. It was…well, I am no Ebert, so I’ll give you some selected quotes from the cinematic delight and you can decide for yourself:

Jedgar met a pretty lady. “I’m gonna show her the card catalog system I invented on our date,” Jedgar said to his mother. Let me reiterate: She was pretty. He wanted to show her a card catalog. Then he tried to kiss her, got rejected, then proposed. Because that’s what normal people would do. Needless to say, he got rejected again. As Roger Ebert said, “She could tell nothing was stirring in his nether regions.”

Then Jedgar meets Clove, or Clive, or maybe Clyde. He instantly likes Clock, and asks him to be his new best buddy/awesome sidekick at the Bureau. Clint is a really attractive fellow who likes talking about suits and shoes and hairdos. He is, in a word, fabulous.

Then they go to a swanky nightclub in New York and sit with Ginger Rogers and her mother and her loose friend, who asks Jedgar if she can warm his bed up for him. Then Ginger’s mama asks Jedgar for a dance and he (awkwardly) declines. Then he leaves the club, goes back to his hotel room with his mother, tells her he hates–hates–hates dancing…with women. Because apparently he has homoerotic tendencies and a stutter. Mother makes him talk to himself in the mirror without stuttering, which is actually kind of heartbreaking, and then she says she’d rather have a dead son than a daffodil son, because that’s just not natural. And also impossible, because really, who ever heard of a human-flower hybrid. Then she picks her creaking body off the bed and teaches him to dance.

Cut. Clive shatters a glass against the wall in rage. He and Jedgar have just had a really weird conversation which started with Clover saying he loved Jedgar and ended with Jedgar saying he was gettin’ frisky with an actress. “Have you been physical?” Climb asked. “Yes,” Jedgar replied. That’s when the glass shattering began. “Pick that glass up right now, Clunk!” Jedgar shouted. “NO!” Klutz screamed back, his body language resembling that of a small child having a tantrum. He smashed something else. “You’re not wearing shoes, stop doing that!” Jedgar yelled, worrying for Clove’s safety. “Blahhhhh!!!!!” Clarence yelled. Then they started punching each other and fell to the ground in a writhing mass of blood and fists and (oh weird I totally didn’t predict this because it’s so not clichéd) then Clud held Jedgar down and they kissed and it was really weird.

Let’s please not forget that just moments before, the pair had been criticising Desi Arnaz’ alligator shoes and his “fake redhead wife’s” hat, which Jedgar skillfully reproduced with a bouquet of marigolds or some such flower.

And then Jedgar’s mother died. Throughout the whole movie his mother was in his ear whispering things like, “Have faith Jedgar, keep strong, hang on a minute while I lock your father in this weird closet.” So when she died, it came as a great shock to Jeddyboy, who proceeded to put her dress and necklace on, then rip the necklace off, then curl up in the fetal position on the floor and cry…because that is the beauty of cinema.

Cut. They’re old. Clove enters, all puffed up like a mannequin/robot/slug? Here’s a question: who did the makeup for this movie? For goodness sake… Anyway, Clink’s got a swollen, freckled face and then he has a stroke at the racetrack and Jedgar gets mad at him because he isn’t the young whippersnapper he once was. Then they eat eggs.

Then Jedgar dies. And his housekeeper leaves his body sprawled across the floor and invites Clink up. And he’s really sad, because they were bros for life, and it was actually pretty cute and super sad but also freaky because Jedgar was like…dead…

And that’s all I have to say about that. Because really, what else is there to say besides thank goodness that’s over. Because writing this involved reliving some of the scenes and I almost had a breakdown.