As two awards-season films about parents and children struggling with the latter's addictions, Beautiful Boy and Ben is Back were always going to be linked. The funny thing is that the movies take very different routes to get to much the same place, without ever being particularly good.
Beautiful Boy is based on the memoirs of both a father and his son. It jumps around in time, examining how the son fell into addiction and how he struggled to get clean. This approach feels like a good way to get at the truth of what really happened. But the movie just sort of floats along, struggling to find its bearings.
Ben is Back puts a lot more narrative meat on the bone, making it both more compelling and more contrived. When the son returns home from rehab for an ill-advised Christmas visit, someone breaks into his family's house and steals their dog. He and his mother go on a journey to save the dog, reflect on how things got so bad, and prevent the son from relapsing or dying (which might be the same thing).
There are certain movies where the protagonist has to go up against something much bigger than herself. It could be a natural disaster. It could be sharks or dinosaurs. It could be cancer. Or it could be a parent battling a child's addiction. In such cases, there isn't much opportunity for interesting drama. There might be thrills, but the heroes' choices are severely curtailed; all they can do is try their best and hope for good fortune.
Another challenge for addiction movies is that there isn't much room for subtlety or nuance. Every sideways glance is freighted with meaning, a sign that the characters aren't being totally honest with one another. Every 30 second period alone is a chance for the addict to relapse. And there aren't many grey areas in films like these: the addict is either on the wagon or falling back off.
Ben is Back tries to solve this problem by injecting some suspense into whether the addict is really being honest or is just looking for opportunities to get high. And the actors all give committed performances. But the script barely has to do any work to turn up the histrionics. It's a bit like watching a movie about a sick puppy. Its heavy emotions don't quite feel earned.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
A Simple Favor
Paul Feig has had a strange career. After starting out as an actor, he moved behind the camera. He got his big break cocreating "Freaks and Geeks" with Judd Apatow. The show was a very grounded drama examining the pitfalls of high school and aging. He then made "I Am David," a film about a boy escaping from a concentration camp. Heavy stuff.
Since then, though, he's mostly spent his time making ever-more ridiculous comedies such as "The Heat" and "Spy." It's telling that when he and Apatow took over at the helm of "Bridesmaids," they made a small indie film much broader, most infamously by inserting an extended diarrhea-and-vomit sequence.
Feig's latest, "A Simple Favor," would seem to be a turn toward more serious fare. There's infidelity, murder, and a mysterious disappearance. Yet in a way, this film is as ridiculous as anything Feig has directed. It offers up some scenic views before eventually driving into Crazytown.
Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie Smothers, a seemingly prudish stay-at-home mom whose life is changed when she meets fellow mom Emily, yet another uber-chic role for Blake Lively. Emily shows off a depressive personality and hides a lot more. One day, Emily asks Stephanie to pick her son up from school. Then she doesn't come home.
This is all fun and games for a while, as Stephanie tries to track down Emily. But even after she cracks that mystery, the film is still far from its endgame. It piles on the twists until it collapses in on its own pretzel logic. Eventually, keeping straight which characters are allied with one another becomes impossible. Adding to the chaos, the script throws in plenty of broad comedy, too, along with some feints at observations on motherhood and female friendship that never really say anything.
It's a shame, because Kendrick nails every pose this ridiculous movie puts her into. "A Simple Favor" is a movie that wants to give everything to everyone: Comedy! Drama! Suspense! Surprise! Social commentary! But as has often been remarked this decade, one can't have it all.
Since then, though, he's mostly spent his time making ever-more ridiculous comedies such as "The Heat" and "Spy." It's telling that when he and Apatow took over at the helm of "Bridesmaids," they made a small indie film much broader, most infamously by inserting an extended diarrhea-and-vomit sequence.
Feig's latest, "A Simple Favor," would seem to be a turn toward more serious fare. There's infidelity, murder, and a mysterious disappearance. Yet in a way, this film is as ridiculous as anything Feig has directed. It offers up some scenic views before eventually driving into Crazytown.
Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie Smothers, a seemingly prudish stay-at-home mom whose life is changed when she meets fellow mom Emily, yet another uber-chic role for Blake Lively. Emily shows off a depressive personality and hides a lot more. One day, Emily asks Stephanie to pick her son up from school. Then she doesn't come home.
This is all fun and games for a while, as Stephanie tries to track down Emily. But even after she cracks that mystery, the film is still far from its endgame. It piles on the twists until it collapses in on its own pretzel logic. Eventually, keeping straight which characters are allied with one another becomes impossible. Adding to the chaos, the script throws in plenty of broad comedy, too, along with some feints at observations on motherhood and female friendship that never really say anything.
It's a shame, because Kendrick nails every pose this ridiculous movie puts her into. "A Simple Favor" is a movie that wants to give everything to everyone: Comedy! Drama! Suspense! Surprise! Social commentary! But as has often been remarked this decade, one can't have it all.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
What About Bob?
For one of our most beloved comedic actors, Bill Murray didn't make very many funny movies. Caddyshack? Stripes? Ghostbusters? All bad films. (And the stakes in Groundhog Day are too high for it to be considered a comedy.) Part of the problem is that Murray's heyday was in the execrable '80s, probably the only decade in which Chevy Chase could have become a movie star. But some of the challenge stemmed from the nature of Murray's weirdo deadpan persona. He's an odd sort to build a movie around. When faced with a calamity, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, or Will Ferrell throw a tantrum. Murray just shrugs his shoulders.
The genius of What About Bob? is that it takes the things everybody likes about Bill Murray and amplifies them. He's the offbeat guy everyone wants to be around. But his neuroses have also been cranked up to 11, and that serves as the engine for the plot. He stalks his psychiatrist, played by a razor-sharp Richard Dreyfuss, but he's so nice about it that his shrink is the only one who seems bothered. The film slowly becomes an adult version of Looney Tunes, with Dreyfuss' Elmer Fudd going to increasingly desperate lengths to get rid of Murray's Bugs Bunny. His efforts to "get rid of" Bob become more literal as the movie goes along, giving the film a dark edge that helps prevent it from slipping into sentimentality.
The ending also helps in this regard. Unlike Planes, Trains, and Automobiles--another comedy about a lovable loser with a finale smothered in Cheez-Wiz--What About Bob? never redeems Dreyfuss as the straight man. It's content to subtly show that we may have something to learn from "crazy" people. That the "sane" ones might not be so stable after all.
The genius of What About Bob? is that it takes the things everybody likes about Bill Murray and amplifies them. He's the offbeat guy everyone wants to be around. But his neuroses have also been cranked up to 11, and that serves as the engine for the plot. He stalks his psychiatrist, played by a razor-sharp Richard Dreyfuss, but he's so nice about it that his shrink is the only one who seems bothered. The film slowly becomes an adult version of Looney Tunes, with Dreyfuss' Elmer Fudd going to increasingly desperate lengths to get rid of Murray's Bugs Bunny. His efforts to "get rid of" Bob become more literal as the movie goes along, giving the film a dark edge that helps prevent it from slipping into sentimentality.
The ending also helps in this regard. Unlike Planes, Trains, and Automobiles--another comedy about a lovable loser with a finale smothered in Cheez-Wiz--What About Bob? never redeems Dreyfuss as the straight man. It's content to subtly show that we may have something to learn from "crazy" people. That the "sane" ones might not be so stable after all.
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