As dry as Wes Anderson and shorn of the precious whimsy and Bill Murray's gurning, The Squid and the Whale is the filet of indiecore movies.
Most movies about family actually amount to stories of an individual struggle for self-definition. On paper, The Squid and the Whale is no different, and there is no doubt that Walt is the film’s protagonist. But that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it swiftness and clarity of attack (which Baumbach shares with Anderson, his producer and occasional collaborator) create scenes that continue to build in the mind after they’ve finished. The emotional balance is constantly shifting, like a lifeboat for three with four people on it, in which everyone takes turns as stabilizing center, ballast, and excess baggage.[…]
The title might very well refer to mother and father [but] in truth every one of the four major characters takes turns being a squid and a whale. Everyone is simultaneously everyone else’s refuge and monster.
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[The finale] amounts to more than Walt’s symbolic passage to manhood. It’s the moment that he steps out of the scenario and is confronted by the beauty and chaos of the big, wide universe beyond his broken family circle back in Brooklyn.
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[A] hometown movie made by a hometown boy that feels true to New York life on every level. It is astonishing to consider the number of films and TV shows shot here that get the city wrong, that use it as nothing more than an easily identifiable backdrop. The way The Squid and the Whale’s characters move and behave in relation to their surroundings, the rhythms of their speech, the dollhouse smallness of brownstone neighborhoods with low-hanging trees—everything felt right in 2005, and it feels even righter now.
— Kent Jones (Criterion)
The staccato cadence of Tim Streeto’s editing, which clusters together short scenes that excise the beginnings and ends of interactions, often keeps the impact of Bernard’s autocratic parenting from registering fully on impact.
— Carson Lund (Slant Magazine)
These kids have it great. Their traumas will inspire them someday.
Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.