Wednesday, July 8, 2015

'Blu-ray or Bust’ - WHILE WE’RE YOUNG



'Blu-ray or Bust’
WHILE WE’RE YOUNG (R, 2014, 97 minutes, A24/SCOTT RUDIN PRODUCTIONS)

My first official Charles Grodin movie was MIDNIGHT RUN. Loved the film. The chemistry between Grodin and Robert DeNiro was this amazing, wonderful slice of movie-making hilarity. His easy delivery, his wit, that look in his eyes that told you he was letting you, the viewer, in on the joke. He could be deadpan, sarcastic, flippant, and just plain fun to watch.

Between 1988 and now, Grodin got old.

His role in writer/director Noah Baumbach’s WHILE WE’RE YOUNG seems almost an insult to the legend of Grodin, who has exactly two funny lines in the whole film. That is just one of the mysteries at the heart of a movie that wanted to be the hipster version of THIS IS FORTY, but becomes something…less, which surprised the hell out of me. One of my favorite films of 2012 was Baumbach’s FRANCES HA, a movie that managed to pull feelings of happiness and despair right out of you with a seemingly casual smile. YOUNG is definitely not that film.

YOUNG stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a slightly older couple coming to grips with the fact that they are over the age of forty and childless, while their friends are popping out babies like magic vaginal Pez dispensers. Enter younger couple Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried), two twenty-somethings with bohemian tendencies who appear to be the easy answer to all of the growing pains plaguing Josh and Cornelia.

After twenty minutes, I was ready to turn this off. But you don’t do that to Charles Grodin. So I waited. Don’t get me wrong; there are a few amusing moments along the way. Cornelia attending hip-hop dance class is rather amusing, as is one interaction between Grodin and Stiller. But every scene that Grodin is in, he looks pained. He looks old. He looks as if he has a whole lot more he wants to say but cannot because this is Baumbach’s show, and he apparently is a censorious dictator who won’t allow anyone to let his or her character breathe. This is a big change from the carefree and loose way that Greta Gerwig carried her way through FRANCES HA, and it is a bit depressing.

This is not to mention the fact that the latter part of the film switches gears entirely. The story shifts so suddenly that you actually feel bad for the script. We see a character go from trying to interject some life into his situation to watching him struggle to show how righteous his ideals truly are. It pained me to see the actor have to move his character into full-blown “look at me!” mode at the drop of a hat (literally).

The special features, of which there are six, last for a total of nine minutes. Seriously. Grodin gets his own one-minute doc, while the director gives himself a full two minutes. (Insert heavy, disheartened sigh here) There is nothing revealing at all about the “special” features, and you get absolutely no insight as to what went into making this boring mess. I expected to see a documentary that showed how everyone on the set kept from nodding off during the production…

Perhaps this is a film best appreciated by the aforementioned hipsters. Or just people that live in New York. As a flailing forty-something geek myself, I had problems connecting with this film on any level. If I were more of a Woody Allen fan, maybe it would have resonated more. But it didn’t. It just pissed me off by including a comedy legend in a role that should have been for…say…anyone that is naturally un-funny. Anyone but Grodin.

Film Grade: D
Special Features: F
Blu-ray Necessary: Not for any reason at all

T.S. Kummelman

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