Review: The Hollars

John Krasinski is a wannabe graphic novelist about to have a baby with girlfriend Anna Kendrick when he gets an unfortunate call from back home concerning his mother (Margo Martindale). Racing back to his old hometown he finds his mother is in the hospital with a large and serious brain tumour, and his worried but oblivious father (Richard Jenkins) and idiot brother (Sharlto Copley) are having juvenile scuffle in the hospital room over nothing. This brood is dysfunctional to say the least. Did I mention that idiot Copley still lives at home and frequently spies on his ex and their kids, much to the chagrin of both her and the seemingly patient local youth pastor (Josh Grobin!) she’s moved on from him with? Yeah, there’s that. Then there’s the nurse (Charlie Day) whose wife (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is Krasinski’s ex, and he’s clearly harbouring some resentment to Krasinski being back in town, even though he’s clearly moved on and about to have a baby. Mary Kay Place appears briefly as Jenkins’ sister and employee in the family business.

A good cast and some laughs can’t hide a complete lack of originality in this mediocre 2016 dramedy directed by star John Krasinski (co-star of the American version of TV’s “The Office”) and scripted by James C. Strouse (writer-director of the thinly-plotted “Grace is Gone”). The characters are offbeat and weird, but the plot has been done a zillion times before, often much, much better. Please, no more ‘dramadies’ about guys returning home to their small town for some kind of family event, usually a morbid one. Enough already. Oh, and if Randall Park can stop appearing in everything for a while, that’d be great too.

I initially had a hard time believing that Margo Martindale and Richard Jenkins were the parents of Sharlto Copley and John Krasinski, but eventually you forget about that, it’s hardly important. Copley and especially Jenkins are funny as a most dysfunctional father and son pairing, with comical slapping involved. These people are in a way quite awful, and don’t even seem to know very much about one another, which is a bit amusing. Copley and Jenkins once again, both seem like hopeless idiots, the latter barely seems to take anything in. Martindale is perfect as the loving matriarch, even if I feel she peaked as an actress back in 2004 playing Hillary Swank’s awful trailer trash mother in “Million Dollar Baby”. However, it’s not long (probably around the time Charlie Day rears his annoying head) before you realise that this is so 2005, and a subpar 2005 dramedy at that. It’s been there, done that, done worse than usual. The comic dysfunction is fun for a bit, but not often enough to overcome the dreary familiarity of the opening stanza of the film. Meanwhile, veteran character actress Mary Kay Place, the lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and adorkable Anna Kendrick are all wasted (I’m sick of saying that about the latter) in useless parts, and the latter’s pregnancy belly proves a constant continuity issue as well. I’m also not sure why singer Josh Groban was cast as a preacher currently shacking up with Copley’s ex, but he’s perfectly fine in the part I suppose.

While the first half has most of the amusing moments, the last half is definitely the strongest. It’s not strong enough to come close to saving it (and there’s at least one plot point that comes at a stupidly sitcom-ish contrived time) but it’s certainly a lot stronger than the first 40 minutes or so. The film has one admittedly great scene where Martindale is about to go in for surgery, has the exact panicked reaction I would have, and Jenkins tries to calm her down. I can definitely empathise with that.

A good cast is disrespected by the screenwriter in this occasionally amusing but overly familiar flick that isn’t anywhere near as good as you want it to be. Sitcom fluff, it does admittedly represent Sharlto Copley’s best work to date as an actor. That’s something I guess, and Krasinski seems a decent director of actors, if nothing else. 

Rating: C