Review: 5 Flights Up

Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton play a long-married couple looking to sell their apartment in Brooklyn. Whilst we watch them go through the process of enduring potential buyers and looking for their new living space, a potential terrorist threat in the area looms and may do damage to the selling price they can get. Also, the couple’s dog is in ill health, with an expensive medical bill the likely outcome. Cynthia Nixon plays the couple’s realtor niece who tirelessly tries to negotiate deals. Meanwhile, we also see flashbacks to their early days as an interracial couple (played by Claire van der Boom and Korey Jackson) at a time when it wasn’t quite so common nor accepted by (im)polite society.

 

You might not think so on paper, but Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton make for a really lovely screen couple in this 2015 lightweight drama from director Richard Loncraine (“Richard III” and…“Firewall”). They both give solid performances and play a really likeable and convincing couple, so it’s a shame the film isn’t worthy of them. In fact, it’s barely a movie at all, and it relies almost entirely on its two stars.

 

Scripted by Charlie Peters (scribe of the cinematic titans “3 Men and a Little Lady”, “Her Alibi”, “My Father the Hero” and “Hot to Trot”) from a novel by Jill Ciment, you’d have to be really interested in the apartment-hunting thing to get the most enjoyment out of this. I have less than zero interest in real estate whatsoever, so boy did I ever need the cast and characters to work for me. At least in the two lead roles (and the lovely Claire van der Boom in flashbacks) I got enough to keep me watching, albeit barely. Hell, even Cynthia Nixon is well-cast here as a not especially likeable realtor (and Keaton’s niece).

 

I almost wish it were a Woody Allen film, as Woody (at least when he’s in form) would likely take the basic concept and characters and actually go somewhere with it. Loncraine and Peters basically give us a TV pilot to a show that might potentially go somewhere more interesting in subsequent episodes, but likely wouldn’t get picked up in order to do so anyway. Also, it has to be said that just because you can have Morgan Freeman narrate your film, that doesn’t mean you should. That’s especially the case here where the narration is strangely intermittent and nothing that his overall performance doesn’t already communicate effectively.

 

There’s a bit of fun watching them (particularly the dry Freeman) react to a series of would-be buyers, but I’m not sure that’s enough to thoroughly recommend a film on. Surely these two characters have more interesting stories to tell than their experiences buying and selling property and their potentially dying dog?

 

A nice movie about nice people played by popular stars, but not a whole lot else going on. It’s just not much of a story, and certainly nothing you need to go out of your way to see. It’s nice and the stars carry it to a certain point, but you’ll forget it all almost instantly afterwards.

 

Rating: C+