Caffeinated Clint
Jason Reitman’s latest is the of Bing of movies – it’s basically got what you need, and it’s windows of imagery and narrative open prettily enough, but when compared to Reitman’s Foxier earlier efforts, it’s clearly missing the punch and purpose of a mandarin-toned marsupial.
But first up, an apology – as far as the film is concerned, the internet is to blame for much of today’s problems. To begin this review with ‘browser humour’ seems a little debauched. So I’ll make it up to you Jase, I’m now on a rusty Kosmopolit typewriter, with just a solitary phallic-shaped candle to light my page, and my own singing voice to provide motivational mood music. I’ll then hand deliver this review to my host to upload himself. As I write it, I won’t even use my phone to check how long I’ve been writing – unless I can remember how to approximate time by reading the shadows on a dimly lit window sill. Nup, I get it, technology – in particular, the internet – is bad, and I should’ve learnt that the moment Sandra Bullock had her files stolen from Jeremy Northam in “The Net”.
If you’re to swig everything “Men, Women & Children” tells you, you’ll cut off the internet, throw away your iPhone, eat your Wifi USB stick, never again be tempted to cheat on your spouse, nor masturbate to sexual imagery. You definitely won’t feel the need to succumb to any sort of peer pressure.
Yeah, right.
Co-written by Reitman and Erin Cressida Wilson, the film chronicles the lives and loves of a a group of high school teenagers and their parents who attempt to navigate the many ways the Internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives.
Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt play a long-married couple who, as a result of a dwindling spark, both start to look elsewhere for sex; Judy Greer plays a rather heretical parent and one-time ingénue who encourages her very attractive but emotionally-empty teenage daughter to pose for racy photographs, which she consequently posts online; Jennifer Garner plays a terribly overprotective mother who checks her daughter’s (Kaitlyn Dever) phone and internet daily for any signs of waywardness, and Dean Norris plays a single father who, struggling to get over the woman who deserted him and his son (Ansel Elgort), bravely dives back into the dating pool. They all, of course, cross over into each other’s lives at some point during the movie.
For as much as he knows about teen pregnancy (“Juno”) and life as a frequent flyer (“Up in the Air”), Reitman has certainly missed the memo when it comes to the deep and dark messages of his own libretto. While the internet – with its social networks, dating websites, and filthy old men chasing teenagers – has unquestionably ramped up parents’ fears and obliterated much of the privacy we had before modems, what the film doesn’t seem to understand is that that much of the things people blame on technology were there all along. Yes, we’ve all turned into lazy, technology-addicts who spend more time online than in the RL, but Reitman seems to think our PCs are much worse than that, almost blaming them for the downfall of humanity.
(And yet he’ll be relying on the internet to sell his film via a pricey social media campaign, right?).
Muffled, puzzled message aside the man has made a decent-enough movie here. It’s broth of hip humour and melodramatic darkness doesn’t work as well here as it has in his earlier fare, but his ambitious structure (complete with Emma Thompson’s narration as ‘God’) and the performances of his very impressive ensemble cast lift it above ‘Hulu Premiere’ fodder.
It’s the performances that all eyes will be on here. From Adam Sandler’s welcome return to meaty dramatic “acting” (something sorely lacking in “Grown Ups 2”) to Rosemarie DeWitt’s superbly-realistic lost-and-lusting mama turn, the vets get high marks here. Jennifer Garner and Judy Greer – reuniting for the first time since tween comedy “Suddenly 30” – are especially impressive in roles we don’t normally see them play.
Also, first rate performances by the younger actors (Ansel Elgort, Olivia Crocicchia), help expunge the stench of some of the over-the-topness and hokeyness of the material. There’s some absolute killer performances amongst the teen brigade here, with a couple of them bound to go onto bigger things as a result of their turns here alone.
The film’s script, though scarred with a questionable message, works effectively enough. anyone that can craft an entertaining crossed-narratives and crossed-characters story, where a group of characters are all connected by someone, something or some thread, and give them all a plausible reason to have weaved into each other’s lives by end, always deserves praise. Those things are harder to pull off than an accepted password for a highly-secure internet dating site.
Blowing the candle out now. Pffwah!
