Review: This is Where I Leave You

After finding his wife in bed with his douchebag boss (Dax Shepard, natch), Jason Bateman gets even worse news the next morning. His sister (Tina Fey) calls him to inform him that their father has died, and that the family are to gather together to sit Shiva, the week-long Jewish mourning ritual. Never mind that dad was largely an atheist and surgically-enhanced mum (Jane Fonda) isn’t even Jewish, this was what the old man apparently wanted. Along for the week are somewhat straight-laced oldest son Corey Stoll (who stayed in the home town to work for the family business), and the baby of the group Adam Driver, an immature idiot who likes to stir shit at extremely inappropriate times and is engaged to his older psychologist (Connie Britton). Kathryn Hahn plays Stoll’s wife, who desperately wants to get pregnant, Timothy Olyphant plays the next door neighbour and Fey’s ex-boyfriend, whose slight brain injury was caused by a car accident years ago. Seeing him again brings up all kinds of emotions for Fey, who is also not terribly happily married. Speaking of old flames, Rose Byrne plays Bateman’s, now running the local ice rink, though with his situation back home, his emotions, like Fey’s are also kinda confused and complicated. Ben Schwartz turns up as a former neighbourhood kid who is now an inexperienced rabbi, who gets seriously annoyed with Driver’s ribbing and usage of an unflattering old nickname.

 

Directed by Shawn Levy (“Big Fat Liar”, “Date Night”, “Night at the Museum”), this 2014 family-centric comedy/drama gets off to a pretty rank start. Jane Fonda and her fake boobs seem too caricatured, Tina Fey isn’t an actress and is clearly just reading her lines out loud, and seriously, this plot again? How many more times do we need to see a film about a dysfunctional family being forced to come together due to the death of a patriarch? Ugh, there’s even a parent who wrote a tell-all book about her own kids’ problems! Didn’t we already see that in “A.C.O.D.”? The funny thing is, this film eventually sneaks up on you. Yes, the plot is still eye-rollingly ancient, and yes I found myself wishing Tina Fey (who is smart and comes across as absolutely lovely in interviews) were replaced by a genuine actress, but…by the end I have to say I ended up enjoying this one. Hell, Jane Fonda’s performance seemed a lot looser and maternally warmer by the end of the film as well. There’s a real human being in there behind the fake boobs and TMI confessions. I’ll admit that Bateman’s awkwardness around his mother’s enhancements was actually hilarious at times. In fact, despite my initial resistance, I ended up liking these dysfunctional characters for the most part.

 

Scripted by Jonathan Tropper (and based on his own 2009 novel), the film won’t win any awards for originality, and the gross-out gags involving the potty are just plain dumb. However, lead actor Jason Bateman lends the film an authenticity, and a seemingly innate decency that really does give it a lift. In fact, for a film that is mostly a comedy, Bateman gives one of his most mature, and best dramatic (or at least semi-dramatic) performances to date. I actually found myself a little moved by him in this, though it took me some time to be won over. Some of his best dramatic moments are those in which Bateman doesn’t even speak. He doesn’t have to, we can read what he is thinking from his face. It’s called subtlety, and a bloody good demonstration of it from Bateman. It’s like we’ve been watching the maturity of Jason Bateman over the years in film and on TV, and this is a very interesting point in that trajectory. I mean, if someone had told me 25 years ago that Jason Freaking Bateman would be headlining cinematically-released films in 2014, I’d have laughed in their face. Justine Bateman’s brother? Really? Yes, really. Should we forgive him for “Teen Wolf Too” now? Maybe not (It’s a fucking serious crime against cinema, after all!), but boy has he become a reliable actor, almost always the best thing in any movie he appears in (his cameo in “Smokin’ Aces” was a sleazy riot!). He’s far and away the best thing here, that’s for sure.

 

Bateman is backed up by an interesting, eclectic group of actors here in theory, but they prove hit and miss. Fey’s a problem, no doubt about it, she’s not even really acting. I also think Kathryn Hahn really needs to get a new act soon, because her typecasting as a horny loser is getting to be a little hard to watch now. I’m starting to feel genuinely sorry for the actress herself. However, Adam Driver and Ben Schwartz steal their every scene as the douchebag youngest of the family, and the friend/nervous rabbi who is the constant butt of Driver’s jokes. Schwartz’s rabbi character is almost as hilarious as Rowan Atkinson in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. Connie Britton doesn’t get a whole lot to do, but I just plain like her and she does what she can here. Rose Byrne is alright as the potential love interest, but of all the things Byrne is, funny isn’t one of them. She’s trying really hard, and perhaps that’s the problem. You can’t try to be funny. In fact, despite my issues with Fey’s casting, she’s a part of the two most interesting relationships in the film, much more interesting than Bateman/Byrne: the sibling relationship between her and Bateman, and the love-that-could-never-be between Fey and Timothy Olyphant. Olyphant is a better actor than the amount of time he has allows him to be here, it’s a real shame that the most interesting character is also the least developed.

 

This one grew on me. It’s not great, but I liked that these characters are dysfunctional without being unlikeable stereotypes. There’s some caricature, but not to the point where it’s un-relatable. I just wish the central premise weren’t so ancient and played out. Still, it’s a pretty easy watch, despite my initial misgivings. Bateman is excellent, the film’s solid…ish.

 

Rating: B-