BEFORE: Kumail Nanjiani carries over from "The Big Sick", though I don't think he's got quite as big a role in this film. I didn't even notice, but today's film is from the same director as "The Big Sick", Michael Showalter, who's a person I've met in the real world. I even hired him once by casting him as a voice-actor in an animated feature called "Hair High", back in 2004.
Tomorrow's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up on TCM is not going to help me any, the main theme is "Westerns", followed by the competitions for "Best Road Comedy" in prime-time and "Best Louis Malle Nominated Film" overnight:
4:00 am "The Naked Spur" (1953)
6:00 am "Cimarron" (1931)
8:15 am "Way Out West" (1937)
9:30 am "The Westerner" (1940
11:30 am "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943)
1:00 pm "How the West Was Won" (1962)
4:00 pm "Broken Arrow" (1950)
5:45 pm "Gunfight at the OK Corral" (1957)
8:00 pm "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963)
11:00 pm "The Great Race" (1965)
2:00 am "Atlantic City" (1980)
4:00 am "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (1987)
To my shame, I've only seen the two road comedies, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (one of my favorite films) and "The Great Race". I feel like I should watch more Louis Malle, but for that matter, I should watch more Bergman films too, and I just never get around to it. Another 2 out of 12 brings me only up to 73 out of 186, or 39.2%. I'm fading fast, only the musicals can save me now.
THE PLOT: A self-help seminar inspires a sixty-something woman to romantically pursue her younger co-worker.
AFTER: This sort of falls in line with the other films I've watched lately about people who are socially or medically just a bit "off", like "Wilson" and "Wakefield" and "Adam", only this one's about an older woman who (like those others I mentioned) has trouble reading the social cues. Wow, that's rapidly becoming a running theme here at the Movie Year, from that cop in "Game Night" and that guy with the weird dolls in "Welcome to Marwen", right down to Dick Cheney in "Vice", who wasn't self-aware enough to realize that he was an evil prick. Go figure. This will all (hopefully) find its way into my annual summary of running themes at the end of the year. Self-awareness is something we should all strive for, whether you're a stand-up comic ("The Big Sick") or an over-bearing mother ("The Meddler"). Can we assume that if these characters were more self-aware about who they are, that they wouldn't act the way that they do? Discuss...
But really, I think giving these characters one easily definable personality quirk has become something of a cinematic shorthand - oh, yeah, that's the film about the detective that has commitment issues, and THAT's the film about the performance artist who wears a giant fake head all the time. See? One quick little unique defining characteristic, and you can build a film around that using proper six-act structure. (Act 5 - find a way to get the guy to take his fake head off...). But Doris has a whole host of problems, and only one of them is a lack of self-awareness.
Now, of course, they're all connected, because she has fantasies about a young man in her office, and if she were more self-aware, she'd realize that there's a great gulf between having a fantasy about someone, and being in a solid, working relationship with them. After a short time hanging out with this young man, she's made the mental leap to a relationship, and really, that can happen to anyone. You thought you were dating someone, but THEY thought you were only hanging out. Then you put yourself out there and realize that the feeling's not mutual, we've all been there, right? OK, I have.
Doris is also a hoarder, or perhaps her mother was a hoarder, or perhaps both, it's not totally clear. And the film starts with her mother's funeral, and if you've ever seen those "Hoarders" shows, you'll know that a personal tragedy is often behind the hoarding mentality, people who can't let go of their loved ones or their emotions also can't let go of physical things, even if those things are filling up the living room or preventing them from using their shower. So it's the lack of self-awareness, the inability to read social cues, the hoarding, the relying on fantasies to get through the day, am I leaving anything out here? She apparently has a dead-end job doing data entry, but this was also a little bit murky, I'm not sure they ever said what kind of company they all worked for.
Anyway, she lies a little bit to get this guy's attention, like she claims to be a fan of his favorite band and "accidentally" bumps into him at one of their concerts, she also stalks him on-line and in the real world, only to find out he's got a girlfriend. Things kind of devolve further from there - but really, getting involved with a co-worker or boss is a terrible idea in the first place, no good can really come out of it. The worst case scenario is that one or both of them will be in trouble with HR for some kind of sexual harassment violation, real or imagined, but even the BEST case scenario is that if things work out, they'll be spending all of their time together, at home AND at work, and really, nobody wants that. Home should be the place you go to get away from work, and for some people, the opposite is also true. In theory, those relationships where people see each other in both places are likely to burn out twice as quickly.
But what really pushes the limits of believability here is showing an older woman hanging out and having a good time with a bunch of Williamsburg hipsters - so this is clearly a fantasy. The baby boomers and the hipsters are just not meant to get along - sure, they both listen to vinyl records, but that's about the only thing they have in common. Do you enjoy hanging out with your grandparents, hearing stories about the Korean War, drinking pink lemonade and eating hard ribbon candy? Of course not. Boomers, do you want to go out clubbing with your grandchildren, dropping molly and snapchatting with their friends? Of course not, I rest my case. OK, maybe if drugs were involved, like if the older boomers were smoking pot for medical reasons and the kids were doing it recreationally, but otherwise, it's not going to happen.
Also starring Sally Field (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Max Greenfield (last seen in "A Stupid and Futile Gesture"), Beth Behrs (last heard in "Monsters University"), Tyne Daly (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Get Out"), Elizabeth Reaser (last seen in "The Family Stone"), Peter Gallagher (last seen in "Adam"), Natasha Lyonne (also last seen in "A Stupid and Futile Gesture"), Rich Sommer (ditto), Isabella Acres, Caroline Aaron (last seen in "The Rewrite"), Rebecca Wisocky, Jack Antonoff, Kyle Mooney (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Don Stark (last seen in "Cafe Society"), Nnamdi Asomugha, Roz Ryan (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Anna Akana, Amy Okuda.
RATING: 5 out of 10 rides on the Staten Island ferry
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