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USA 2014
Directed by
Barry Levinson
112 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

Humbling, The


It is easy to see why Al Pacino was attracted to a Philip Roth novel about a washed up once-lauded actor coming to terms with his own irrelevancy.  Pacino apparently took the property to director Barry Levinson with whom Pacino had worked on You Don’t Know Jack, and veteran writer, Buck Henry (Michal Zebede who had only written a couple of TV series episodes also gets a writer credit) and the result is a modest but amusing comedy that, presumably coincidentally, shows a remarkable resemblance to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman which was released only a few months earlier. Not only do the films share a common themes of the life as an actor,  both begin with the main subject talking to himself in his dressing room as he warms up and wondering if he’s up to it anymore; both show the actor being accidentally locked out of the theater and running through Times Square before reentering through the lobby; and both end with a death on stage.  

The Humbling isn’t in the same league as Birdman but it is a lot of fun, with a droll script that pitches the over-the-hill thespian Simon Axler (Pacino) bemusedly resigning himself to his own decline as his mind and body gives out on him, with a representative of the younger generation, Pegeen (Greta Gerwig), the lesbian daughter of a couple of Simon’s friends (Dianne Weist and a sorely under-utilized Dan Hedaya) who decides to act on a lifelong crush on Simon and moves in with him in his Connecticut hideway.  As it turns out it’s not such a hideaway and there a sub-plot involving a crazy woman (Nina Arianda), who Simon meets in a mental home and wants him to kill her abusive husband. Charles Grodin has a small part as Simon’s agent, as does Kyra Sedgwick as Pegeen’s spurned girlfriend.  

Mostly this is amusing stuff although the scenes involving another of Pegeen’s exes, Priscilla, who has undergone gender reassignment and is now Prince (Billy Porter) are rather contrived and of no real relevance to the narrative’s drive.  But it is Pacino’s performance which carries the material off.  Clearly as a once-great legend he has relevant experience to draw on and to his credit, by turning down his familiar schtick he makes Simon so endearing in his befuddlement that his unlikely affair with a girl not even half his age actually seems credible, not creepy.

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