Don't Mind If I Do

I still marvel at how Hollywood gets this wrong.  With the wrong title, you set yourself up with the critics.   A fastball across the plate for a nifty review headline, especially if your movie sucks.   Take, for instance, this film.

"This Is Where I Leave You."

And look at the title of my blog today. 

I actually had another title that didn't make the cut.

"By The Second Reel."

Please stop making my job so easy.

Yes, "This Is Where I Leave You" is that bad.  Actually, it's an oxymoron.  A movie about a dysfunctional family that is, in itself, dysfunctional.  With a stellar cast, you accept so much more.  It was the one aspect that propelled me into the theater.  The lousy script is what shot me out of the theater like a cannonball at the circus. 

The filmmakers think they're so clever.  Put a dysfunctional family together for a big event.  How many times have we seen this done already in the past decade?  Feuding siblings and parents around the Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter or Columbus Day dinner table, check one of the above.   This was a serviceable plot device the first two thousand times it was done.    It's now so incredibly old hat that you want to scream.

In this case, it's a family that is sitting shiva for Dad who just checked out early.  Now there's an actor with a good agent.  Meanwhile, this bunch may or may not even be Jewish which is a running gag in itself.  And the operative word there is "gag" because that's what you do the fourteenth time it plays out.  

Anyway, nobody in this family is normal and they all seem to hate each other.  Jason Bateman just found out his wife is screwing his Howard Stern-like boss so he's already miserable before the chopped liver is even plattered.  Sister Tina Fey hates her husband.   Another son can't get his wife pregnant.  Another one shows up with a woman as old as his mother.  And the matriarchal Jane Fonda shoulders all the burden with her new breasts.   By the way, the latter was the most interesting use of computer graphics in film yet.  

They all fight.  They all keep secrets from one another.   And, every five minutes, somebody throws a plate or a glass.  The dinnerware shattering is key in this film as it's the director's novel way to prevent his audience from going to sleep.    After ten minutes, you realize that you don't care about any of them and the tone of the film meanders from comedy to drama to tragedy and back to comedy in a most unsettling way.   It's almost like what "The Diary of Anne Frank" would be if it had been written by Neil Simon.

"This Is Where I Leave You" is a criminal waste of time and cast.  You'd love to see Fey, Bateman, and Fonda hook up with a better director and script.  And, of course, if the CGI guys are back on duty, it would be even more fun to see just how large Fonda's breasts can get. 

In that case, why not simply remake "Barbarella?"  I don't think she was fighting with her kids.

LEN'S RATING:  One-and-a-half stars.

Dinner last night:  Sandwich and salad.