This is Where I Leave You (October 24, 2014)
This is Where I Leave You is another messed-up-family-that-comes together-movie, and, with The Judge last week, and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day this week, we are reaching saturation point.
That said, This is Where I Leave You resembles August: Osage County more than any of these recent releases, even if the comic tone does not allow for Osage County’s depths of depravity.
With an ensemble cast of talented comic actors, the film has some wonderful moments, but not enough to save this frequently misjudged blend of pathos, sentimentality, sight gags and vulgar comedy.
As with Osage County, a funeral is the premise that enables Widow Hillary Altman (Jane Fonda) to gather her four semi-estranged children together Agatha Christie style, so that all their (and their partners’) anger, resentment, love and regret can boil to the surface in a hysterical fashion.
The premise goes further, however, as Hillary concocts a story that her Jewish husband wanted his family to sit ‘Shiva’.
This is a contrived pretext for Hillary, who has a surprise announcement to make at the end of the seven day ritual. It is also a contrived premise for Writer Jonathan Tropper, whose script (an adaptation of his own novel) requires a platform during which a fairly mundane and clichéd web of individual stories can unfold.
Each child, Paul (Corey Stoll), Judd (Jason Bateman), Wendy (Tina Fey), and Phillip (Adam Driver), has a problem. For Paul, who is managing the family business, it’s sterility that is causing his loving wife Annie (an underused Kathryn Hahn) to crawl into Judd’s bed in order to conceive naturally.
Judd is not in the mood, having just found his wife Quinn (Abigail Spencer) in bed with his radio station boss and best friend (Dax Shepard), leaving him unemployed, disillusioned and single. Wendy has two kids and a loveless marriage to a busy businessman (Aaron Lazar) who is never around. Wendy’s true love is ex-boyfriend Horrey Callen (Timothy Olyphant) who suffered a brain injury and now lives with his mother Linda (Debra Monk).
The Horrey sub-plot is does not say much for Wendy as she apparently sleeps with Horrey when she’s back in town but married someone else after the accident that has plagued her with guilt.
Pretty local ice-skater Penny Moore (Rose Byrne) provides a new lease on life for Judd until Quinn returns with a surprise announcement that leaves Judd reeling. Phillip, an unemployed playboy, introduces his family to his fiancée Tracy (Connie Britton), his former therapist, who is old enough to be his mother and wealthy enough, too.
In a touching, stand-out scene, Tracy confesses to Judd that she knows Phillip has been unfaithful and that she should have known better than to fall for such an immature man-child.
Tracy is a fan of Hillary whose book Cradle and All is a best-selling guide to raising a family. This, in case you missed it, is a bit of irony which is about as subtle as the film gets.
Perhaps the target audience intended for this film is the reason that incest is not thrown into the blender of family crises, but just about everything else is there, including crude jokes about Hillary’s breast enlargement operation that are undignified rather than edgy.
Director Shawn Levy (known for his Night at the Museum films), has a very mixed track record, having given us the dire The Internship and The Pink Panther. He also directed the very funny Date Night, starring Tina Fey in a role far better than the one she is saddled with here.
It must be a testament to the paucity of good roles for older actresses that Fonda’s character is subjected to such indignities and can only become relevant by an unpersuasive change in her life.
by Joyce Glasser, MT film reviewer
