BEFORE: Glenne Headly carries over from "The Namesake" for the fourth and final time this year. I'll follow another link tomorrow that will get me one step closer to Thanksgiving movies, and there are THREE of them in the plan this year. Speaking of Thanksgiving, we made our restaurant reservation today - this is the first time in many years we won't be having holiday dinner with my parents - the last two years we drove up to Massachusetts and brought a turkey dinner to them at their assisted living facility, but now they've moved down to North Carolina to live with my sister. (I stand corrected, in 2020 we couldn't get together because of the pandemic.)
But before that, we used to meet my parents in Connecticut at a carefully chosen (by me) neutral location that was halfway between Boston and NYC. Or I think a couple times they drove all the way down and we took them out to dinner in Queens. Westport, Simsbury, New Haven, I learned about a lot of great restaurants in Connecticut that served on Turkey Day between 2013 and 2019. (This was preceded, of course, by a few years going to Thanksgiving at my brother-in-law's wife's family's house out on Long Island, but that's another whole story...)
Now, suddenly, the holiday is open to us again - and our first thought was Atlantic City. Some of the hotel rooms are cheap that week, I guess most people go and eat with family and don't think about going to a casino buffet. Hey, if most people zig, I don't mind zagging. But going through some of the casino web-sites, I didn't see many Thanksgiving promotions, maybe they haven't posted them yet, only one casino's restaurants had Thanksgiving menus, and they just seemed kind of bland. Great, for $40 or $50 you can get a prix-fixe dinner, but the main course is turkey, duh, of course - but I like to have more options than that. So then we thought, there are casinos in Connecticut, too, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, but same problem, either the restaurants aren't doing anything special, or they just haven't posted those promotions yet.
But we were out on Long Island today so my wife could buy smokes, and we decided to check out this new German restaurant in Stony Brook, called Schnitzels. It was great - and it got us thinking about Long Island again, so I did a search on Thanksgiving dinners on Long Island, and it seemed to be a very short list - this didn't make sense, because there are hundreds of restaurants on Long Island, and I would think most of them would be serving something on Thanksgiving, it's a big restaurant holiday! Maybe I was going about this all wrong, maybe we just had to pick a great restaurant and eat whatever they're serving that day, instead of seeking out the BEST possible Thanksgiving dinner, which is most likely just going to be (yawn), turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes with pumpkin or apple pie for dessert.
Well, I happened upon a buffet lunch that's taking place on the "Gold Coast" in a very upscale place. I don't want to tip our hand because I don't want the place to be super crowded, but we bought 2 tickets in advance. We're going to have to dress up, but since the place is super swanky I'm going to feel like the Great Gatsby this Thanksgiving. AND it's a buffet, AND there are lots of choices beyond turkey, so yeah, it's maybe a little expensive, but we deserve it, right? We've both been working hard and we should treat ourselves. It is America's favorite holiday centered around eating, more than the 4th of July or even the Super Bowl. Yeah, sure, Christmas is up there too, but Thanksgiving is ALL about the food, so in under two weeks I'll be reporting all the details here of our top secret super-fabulous Thanksgiving Long Island mansion experience. Can't wait.
THE PLOT: A black comedy that follows three generations of a family, who come together for the funeral of the patriarch - unveiling a litany of family secrets and covert relationships.
AFTER: I'm aware that it's Veteran's Day weekend, and not just because there was a parade out in the Shirley/Mastic area that held us up in traffic for a while today. Really, we just caught the tail end, if we had left the house any earlier it could have been a lot worse. Unfortunately there's no movie tie-in for me this time around, I think in the past I've tried to work in a war movie here in tribute to the soldiers and sailors of World War II, but that wasn't possible this time around. Yes, this is about a funeral and veterans have funerals, but it's unclear if the deceased character in this movie was a vet. Would've been nice, but it didn't work out, at least I tried.
Instead the character has a lot of secrets, some of which don't come to light until the funeral, and then the reading of the will, in which the deceased patriarch really opens up, and those revelations explain a lot, including why he could never seem to remember his own children's names, and why he was always traveling so much. I guess he was a traveling salesman, or at least that's what he told everyone. His children also have a fair number of secrets, and there's a lot of family dysfunction, and we can assume that much of it comes from the interactions with their father, or the lack thereof. Is that fair?
But really, the movie is about the survivors, the man's four messed-up children and THEIR children, also his widow (their mother) who is so distraught by his death that she tries to kill herself three times over the course of the film. That, um, well, that shouldn't be funny. If you think that IS funny, then maybe this film is right up your alley, but I didn't see the humor in that. For that matter, I didn't see the humor in three of the siblings making fun of their sister because she's gay. Was that OK, back in 2004? I don't think so - I don't think that was EVER OK, so why is that seen again and again in this movie? Sure, things have changed a lot in the last two decades, gay marriage became the law of the land in 2015, as it was in many states before that. Wow, has it only been eight years? I guess it's been longer in Massachusetts and California, but still, that's a major legal change that happened not too long ago.
Of course, it's not OK to be homophobic, but one sibling is REALLY homophobic. There's an explanation given, and it's what you might imagine - she leans that way herself, and she's been hiding that fact for years, and she's married with three kids but slept with women in the past. Ah, so it's transference, she hates that part of herself that is also gay, or she hates her sister because her sister gets to be openly gay, and she doesn't. Or something like that. You know what, it's still not OK, is it? Homophobia that comes from a closeted person because they're closeted or jealous or self-hating or embarrassed is still wrong wrong wrong, and I don't think a character should get a pass here, not even one living in 2004. Sorry, try again.
The gay character's brothers aren't much better, they make jokes about her relationship too, and one brother hides in her bedroom because he thinks he'll be able to watch her have sex with her girlfriend. Nope, that's not OK either. And that character's sons are super-curious about lesbians, so they want to know everything about how it works, and they want to rub her feet or something. Nope, also not OK. Look, maybe it's because I just had to watch the annual anti-discrimination and anti-harassment videos for work, but none of this is OK, except that Lucy gets to date whoever she wants and marry whoever she wants and her family has no right to belittle her about it or make fun of it or ask if they can watch. Full stop.
There are plenty of other neuroses and problems to go around, beyond the suicidal mother and the family not being OK with Lucy's gay relationship. Alice never stops talking and bossing people around, to the point where her husband can't form a coherent sentence, he only stutters and makes "Umm" noises, and her three children don't talk at all. That's also very messed up, how is this considered a comedy? Alice is also distinctly a "Karen" even though they didn't have that term back then. Daniel is a former child star who was famous for being in a peanut butter commercial, and now he makes cameo appearances in adult films, and he can't help feeling he messed up ONE audition somewhere along the way, and ruined his career as a result. Skip is a lawyer who's terrible at lawyering, and he's just as horny and improperly funny as his two teen boys, who have been screwed up ever since their mother left them. Um, sure, a man can raise two teenage sons, but it's assumed here that he would also do a terrible job of it.
Kate, who is Daniel's daughter and therefore the granddaughter of the deceased, is tasked with writing the eulogy, but has trouble doing so because she feels she didn't really get to know her grandfather. OK, so then why is it her job to do this, then? And why are her father, uncle and aunts similarly clueless about what she should say? Did nobody get to know this man at all, and if so, why does he even need a eulogy at all? Since he wanted a Viking funeral on a burning boat, it sounds like he really didn't care much for the process of dying, anyway, or was he just weird? Every character in this whole film is weird, though, so I can't help but wonder if any of this is based on personal experience or a real-world messed up family. That would explain a lot, I suppose, but then that would also lead to a few more questions than answers.
The bigger problem, though, is that none of this is FUNNY. None, not a bit. People trying to commit suicide isn't funny, people mourning isn't really funny, and messed-up people talking about how messed-up they are isn't particularly funny either. It's also not funny how there are SO MANY deceased actors in the cast - people who died years after the film was released, but such a large percentage of the cast is now no longer alive, one could start to wonder if there was some kind of Hollywood curse involved, like with the "Poltergeist" movies. Kelly Preston died in 2020, Glenne Headly in 2017, Rene Aubergenois in 2019, Rip Torn also in 2019, Piper Laurie died just last month, Rance Howard in 2017, even the character actors - Micole Mercurio in 2016, Michael Chapman in 2020, Claudette Nevins too, and Denise Dowse, my link to tomorrow's film, died in 2022.
Look, I know over time everyone's life expectancy is the same, and sometimes I can't watch movies from the 1930's or 1940's without thinking that everyone in those movies is deceased. But this movie isn't even 20 years old, half the cast shouldn't be gone. Sure, some of them were getting on in years, even when this film was made, but that's not the point, because some of those people were only in their 50's or 60's, and people are living longer these days, aren't they? Well, I guess only some of them. It's all a bit sad, isn't it? And not funny at all.
If I had known how not funny this movie was, I probably wouldn't have bothered with it. But I guess I couldn't possibly have known in advance. Why does Hollywood feel the need to make movies like this, and "Death at a Funeral", does someone out there feel that comedy needs to be mined from tragedy? Or the problem with funerals is that there's not enough madcap slapstick? There are other, better ways to improve funerals without trying in vain to make them funny. Why not promote turning people into useful compost or showing their remains being turned into beautiful diamonds, rather than just reveal all their dirty little secrets before you blow them up? Just wondering.
Also starring Zooey Deschanel (last heard in "Trolls World Tour"), Hank Azaria (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Famke Janssen (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Kelly Preston (last seen in "Addicted to Love"), Ray Romano (last seen in "Paddleton"), Debra Winger (last seen in "Kajillionaire"), Jesse Bradford (last seen in "Swimfan"), Piper Laurie (last seen in "De Palma"), Rip Torn (last seen in "Coma"), Rance Howard (last seen in "Fearless"), Paget Brewster (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2"), Eric Pierpoint (last seen in "Holes"), Sherman Howard (last seen in "Ricochet"), René Auberjonois (last heard in "Tarzan & Jane"), Mark Harelik (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Denise Dowse (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Claudette Nevins, Curtis Garcia, Keith Garcia, Matthew Feder, Allisyn Ashley Arm, Jordan Moen, Michael Panes (last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), Michael Chapman (last seen in "House of D"), Vincent Castellanos (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Brian Posehn (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Natasha Sheridan, Micole Mercurio (last seen in "2 Days in the Valley"), Lisa Maris, Lana Antonova (last seen in "Spotlight"), Sara Botsford (last seen in "Legal Eagles"), John Lafayette.
RATING: 3 out of 10 take-out lobsters
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