I like this film. It's far from perfect, but it has moments of brilliance. If Mark Whitacre wasn't a real person and just some made up character, you would probably think that the story was too far fetched. There's an ongoing V.O. throughout the film with Whitacre's random thoughts that I think threw people off a bit. The film got mixed reviews. The fact that he mentions Ginger from the eight grade, shows how his mind works. Random anecdotes that is obviously not important in this conversation or to anyone else but him, and that he mixes actual information that is of importance to the listener with personal feelings about it says a lot about his character. He points out that he went to Cornell, his mother didn't believe he would ever make it into an Ivy League school, so that could be a reason why he made up the story about being adopted. "And the study said people had nice, sympathetic feelings about people who were adopted, and treated them better. So I made up this adoption story, and people did treat me better." I guess he didn't get nice, sympathetic feelings when he was younger. He lied and gained from it. Might as well keep lying if you're gonna get away with it and get something out of it. And even when he admits that he was wrong about telling a lie, he blames others for continuing it. Just perfect. The great thing about this film is that Whitacre is a really deep character. He may come off as a goofy one-note guy in the trailers but when you dig into him a bit you'll see that he his really well drawn and complicated.