First Hit: A mildly entertaining film with one wonderful performance and one mediocre performance.
Ben Stiller plays another version of Ben Stiller. Comparing this to Woody Allen, who tends to play a version of himself in films, I am more intrigued by Allen and am usually bored by Stiller. Seeing Stiller playing another version himself was disappointing because he came off as self absorbed and not intellectually stimulating enough to warrant this sort of exposure.
Here he plays Roger Greenberg a guy who has just been released from a mental hospital in New York and has decided to stay at his brother Phillip’s (played by Chris Messina) house in California. Phillip and his wife Carol (played by Susan Taylor) have a nanny Florence Marr (played by Greta Gerwig) who becomes Roger’s contact point while he stays in their home for a month or so.
Roger is prone to fits of defensive anger and rudeness. He thinks he’s right and expresses his rightness regardless of how it may affect others. Roger is alone, lonely and generally depressed. The problem with all this is there’s little to indicate how or why he ended up in a mental hospital or what created this self absorbed person.
Conversely we have a small number of scenes with Florence at the beginning which give us a very clear picture of who she is and how she operates in the world.
So is this excellent acting by Gerwig and poor acting by Stiller? Or is this poor story development? My bet is that it is a little of both but mostly because Stiller continues to be Stiller and he just isn’t that interesting and is unwilling to embody the character he is playing.
Stiller is mediocre as Roger. Gerwig is wonderful at Florence. She was totally believable and made this film worth watching. Noah Baumbach had a good cast (except Stiller) to direct and this might have as interesting as “Margot at the Wedding” and “The Squid and the Whale” but fell short.
Overall: This is worth watching on video but only if you have some time to kill.