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USA 2017
Directed by
Noah Baumbach
112 minutes
Rated PG

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
4 stars

Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), The

Everyone likes a dysfunctional family story and Noah Baumbach’s latest film is a winning addition to the category.

In his second instance of unusual but effective casting (after Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love in 2003) Adam Sandler plays Danny Meyerowitz, son of Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman) and sister to Jean (Elizabeth Marvel).  With his teenage daughter (Grace Van Patten,) off to college and recently split up with his wife (whom we never see) the unemployed Danny is moving into Harold’s for a while.  Harold, encouraged by his second wife (Emma Thomson) and facilitated by his corporate lawyer son Matthew (Ben Stiller) from another marriage (to Julia played by a barely recognisable Candice Bergen) is on the brink of selling the Manhattan family home and moving out-of-town. The family has come together in order to assess what this means for them and so the scene is set for a blood-letting as deeply-embedded disatisfactions rise to the surface .

Baumbach has had a solid specialty in neatly-drawn character-based observational comedy and The Meyerowitz Stories is a particularly good example of his style, one which allows the performers plenty of scope to enjoy themselves.

Taking the palm is Hoffman as a minor player in the ‘60s and 70s New York art scene (the Whitney bought one of his pieces but appears to have lost it) who was far less important  then than he now believes himself to be. Self-obsessed, deluded, a misanthropic holder of grudges with a knack for offending people, Harold would have been in real life a largely unpleasant figure but for us, he is a lot of fun.

In much the same way his children are more or less self-dissatisfied and even self-destructive, not a little because of Harold’s insensitivity as a parent, but they all have worked out a wry resignation about life. Then there’s Emma Thompson's Maureen, an alcoholic, one-time hippie who pretends to have given up drinking although clearly has not.

Baumbach’s script is delightful, the performances are excellent with the disparate cast convincing as a modern adult family and overall The Meyerowitz Stories provides a light-hearted but not light-weight divertissement.

 

 

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