Bernadette is the kind of woman you would cross the road to avoid and who would also cross the road to avoid meeting you and she's just the perfect character for Cate Blanchett to add to her portfolio of oddballs. She's also married to something of an oddball, (Billy Crudup),who's some kind of computer genius and between them they have managed to create a nice, normal teenage daughter, (newcomer Emma Nelson, superb),and they all live in a Seattle mansion that is literally falling apart. But Bernadette isn't just a sociopathic oddball; she is, or was, a great architect who dropped out and whose midlife crisis has lasted a couple of decades.

"Where'd you go, Bernadette" is a Richard Linklater comedy so you know we are in odddball territory to begin with. What you might not realise is that it's also very funny and naturally more than a little sad. It's like a walking, talking New Yorker cartoon brought to glorious life and not just by Blanchett, (no-one does crazy quite like her),Crudup and Nelson but by a terrific supporting cast headed by Kristen Wiig and with pitch-perfect turns from Judy Greer, Zoe Chao, Laurence Fishburne, David Paymer and Steve Zahn. I loved every crazy, off-the-wall and marvellously moving moment.

Yes, it's a Hollywood film with all the clever coincidences and neat n' tidy endings, but it is also very clever, well acted, and even poetic. Go see a film that doesn't involve flying superheroes, gun fights, or animated toys...you'll be glad you did.

Former star architect Bernadette Fox (Cate Blanchett) is a troubled woman in Seattle. Her only friend is her teen daughter Bee. Her husband Elgie Branch (Billy Crudup) is a tech genius who got rich selling to Microsoft. She has a cantankerous relationship with her neighbor Audrey Griffin (Kristen Wiig) over a hillside full of blackberry. She is troubled by a planned family trip to Antarctica.

I'm mostly interested in this for director Richard Linklater. The cast also seems interesting. I don't know anything about this movie. At first, I'm unsure about Bernadette. It's not easy to like her. Her story is a mystery until a few scenes of constant expositions. There has to be an easier way to reveal her past at an earlier stage. When Bernadette leaps out of the bathroom window, I assumed the story would go one way but it goes slightly wrong. Her obvious motivation is to find Bee and go to her. That's her only reasonable move. It doesn't make sense for her to board a plane and then a boat without knowing first that Bee is onboard. Why go to Antarctica? The math does not add up. Of course, I remember something about the new South Pole structures and I highly doubt this is anything close to the real story. In which case, they need to rework the story. It makes more sense for Bernadette to be pursuing Bee to Antarctica. A lot would have to be reconfigured but it is very much needed.