BEFORE: With this film I wrap up the first week of this year's romance chain, and so far, it's been, well, a bit hit and miss. Oh, there's been romance, of course, but so many other things have come along with it - serial killers, pregnant dogs, writing "Mrs. Dalloway" - what we're really lacking here is any kind of focus at all. What, did I think we were going to learn any real lessons about love from "The Dating Game"? Roger from "Roger Dodger" wasn't much of a teacher either, as all of his advice had to do with taking advantage of women, and we can assume that cancel culture probably took care of Roger at some point. "Vita & Virginia" gave us some insight into what lesbian/bi/poly culture might have been like in the UK in the 1920's, but honestly it was more confusing than anything else - why were the lesbian relationships "affairs" and how the hell did those women stay married? Which kind of leaves us with "Cousins" and "The Last Five Years", one film where two break-ups led to a couple coming together, and another film where two people coming together led to a break-up. Well, I suppose all that is par for the course.
Rafael Sardina carries over from "The Last Five Years" - and I think maybe in the next week I'll really hit my stride on this topic. We've got one week until Valentine's Day, so really we do want to be building up to something right now, there's a long way to go until the end of this year's romance chain, so the one thing we don't want to do is peak too early. It's all about stamina, and if I time this right I think maybe we'll hit a good film on Feb. 14, however at that point I'll still have over a MONTH to go, so topic fatigue at some point is inevitable, it's only a question of WHEN, really.
THE PLOT: A man who escorts wealthy widows in New York's Upper East Side takes a young aspiring playwright under his wing.
AFTER: Yeah, it's another weird one tonight, so who knows, maybe tomorrow things will kick in. "The Extra Man" is almost an UN-romance, perhaps this was a conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers, to not just make another rom-com, to make something weird and funny only NOT that, there's almost an attempt to AVOID romance whenever there's the possibility of it. Kevin Kline plays Henry Harrison, an aging lothario who decidedly is NOT having sex with all of these NYC widows that he escorts, no, no, that would be too tawdry, too basic. However, he will get whatever he can out of those relationships, like an apartment in Palm Beach, Florida for the winter season if he can. But if at any point he feels like HE is being taken advantage of, well then he runs quickly in the other direction. When he dines at the home of Ms. Vivian Cudlip, and they are joined by her friend Meredith, Henry figures out that the dinner was offered so that Meredith could ask him to drive her to her doctor's appointment in Brooklyn, and at that point, the dinner is over and Henry is headed for the door.
At this point, Henry is guiding his young protege and roommate Louis Ives through this world of upper crust ladies who are widowed and still holding on to their NYC apartments, or condos or whatever, but Henry notices that they are starting to die off, so at some point his con game won't work any more. His car breaks down, too, at some point - wait, who has a CAR in Manhattan these days? - and so he's forced to call upon Louis for rides while his car is being serviced. When he learns that the old Buick Electra can't be repaired, he needs Louis to drive him out to Southampton on Long Island, where another woman he knows is selling her car. That woman turns out to not be home, but the trip isn't a total loss, because Henry and Louis and Henry's friend Gershon dance on the beach for a while, at least until Henry's sciatica acts up.
Henry keeps promising to set up Louis with one of these ladies, particularly Vivian's niece, although Henry keeps changing his mind about this, and we find out late in the film why - but also this is one of the carrots he keeps dangling to insure that people keep doing favors for him. Anyway, it's a bit unclear whether Louis would know how to date a woman, he can't seem to get anywhere with Mary, who works for the same magazine as him. Perhaps Louis blew it by pretending to be a vegan but then getting caught eating meat for lunch. He does ask Mary to be his date at a society wedding, however she declines because she has a steady boyfriend, who later turns out to be a jerk, but that's neither here nor there. Louis does steal a bit of lingerie from Mary's shopping bag, but it's not as pervy as it sounds. Louis just wants to wear it because he's toying with the idea of cross-dressing. OK, maybe it is as pervy as it sounds.
This came out in 2010, so really before the trans movement gained a lot of steam - this means that the directors probably felt America wasn't ready yet for a film about a trans person, really cross-dressing was maybe shocking enough back then? Or the trans movement wasn't as big back then as it is now, whichever. But Louis does like going to restaurants with drag servers, and drag shows, and he's been paying an older woman on the side for some form of spanking mixed with role play mixed with occasional sex, maybe? It seems like Louis doesn't really know WHAT he wants, because he kind of wants a bit of everything as long as nobody else knows about it. It's fine, whatever, Louis, go explore and if you find what turns you on, great, and if you don't, well at least you tried a bunch of stuff.
Still, all of this in one movie is like A LOT and just like this whole Movie Week, if there had been a bit of focus here I think that would have gone a long way toward some kind of understanding. If Louis doesn't know what he wants out of life or a relationship, well, then neither do we know what we want for him. Right? At this point last year, I was watching films like "Spoiler Alert", and that film was about a gay relationship that changed its course, several times. So gay, trans, straight, it doesn't matter, people are going to come together and break apart, several times over, and the only constant really is change. Some people stay in the same relationship for a long period of time, but there still may be changes in their dynamic over time.
There is some helpful stuff here, like if you want to know how to sneak into an opera, or how to treat a couple of aging widows to a roast chicken dinner on the cheap, maybe this film could come in handy? But it also represents a lifestyle that has an expiration date, especially with the rising costs of NYC real estate - like it used to be that people could rent an apartment in Manhattan at a reasonable price, and now I think with landlords raising rent every time a tenant dies, you'd have to be already super-rich to rent in Manhattan these days. Also I think if you live in Manhattan your choice would be between an apartment and a car, I don't think anyone can afford both, not with the new congestion pricing and the fact that you also need to pay monthly for garage space, unless you want to spend three hours every night driving around looking for parking. I say go live in the outer boroughs, you can maybe get a house in Brooklyn or Queens and put the money you're paying for Manhattan rent toward making mortgage payments instead and build up some equity.
Directed by Shari Springer Berman (director of "Cinema Verite" and "Girl Most Likely") and Robert Pulcini (ditto)
Also starring Kevin Kline (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Paul Dano (last heard in "Spaceman"), Marian Seldes (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Celia Weston (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Hard Eight"), Patti D'Arbanville (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Dan Hedaya (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Alex Burns (last seen in "13 Conversations About One Thing"), Jason Butler Harner (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Katie Holmes (last seen in "Teaching Mrs. Tingle"), Alicia Goranson (last seen in "How to Make an American Quilt"), Lynn Cohen (last seen in "The Life Before Her Eyes"), John Pankow (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Lewis Payton Jr., Marisa Ryan (last seen in "Human Capital"), Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs, Victoria Barabas, John Leighton (last seen in "Nobody's Fool"), Beth Fowler (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Jackie Hoffman (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Betty Hudson (last seen in "Girl Most Likely"), Jean Brassard (last seen in "The Fault in Our Stars"), Justis Bolding, Peter Kybart (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Jonathan Ames (last seen in "The Great Buck Howard"), Gisele Alicea, Philip Carlson, Barbara Christie, and the voice of Graeme Malcolm (also last seen in "Girl Most Likely")
RATING: 5 out of 10 re-entry stubs
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