This Is Where I Leave You
'This is where I leave you' is what Warner Bros ought to have said after reading the script.
Overview
Films with ensemble casts can be a bit like songs from Girl Talk: they're jam-packed with things you love, but the concomitant is diminished time for each. The hallmark of any good thing is to leave you wanting more, but not to the extent you feel shortchanged, and in Shawn Levy's new film This Is Where I Leave You, that's the unfortunate result.
Leading the troupe is Jason Bateman as Judd Altman, a radio producer who discovers his wife sleeping with his boss just days before his father passes away. Judd returns home for the funeral (a popular thematic device of late, most recently with The Judge), where his psychiatrist mother Hilary (Jane Fonda) reveals he and the rest of the family must sit shiva — a seven-day period of mourning all together under the one roof.
They're a close but dysfunctional group, where good-natured ribbing is the preferred form of communication and their mother's former publication of a bestselling 'family tell-all' unites them in mutual humiliation. That, and her newly enhanced breasts, prone to spilling out of every outfit no matter how high the cut or how tight the strap.
The eldest sibling, Paul (House of Cards' Corey Stoll) is the gruff, responsible one who never left town and is desperately trying to conceive with his hyper-clucky wife Annie (Kathryn Hahn). Tina Fey plays Wendy, the sarcastic mother in a loveless marriage who still pines for the cute boy over the road (Timothy Olyphant).
Then there's Phillip (Girls' Adam Driver), the reckless tearaway who can't help but do or say the wrong thing whenever the opportunity presents itself. Throw in Judd's ex-girlfriend Penny (Rose Byrne) and Phillip's psychiatrist girlfriend Tracy (Connie Britton) and the stage is set for the inevitable melting pot of unaired grievances, shocking revelations and newfound romances.
The setup is far from innovative; thirty years ago The Big Chill used the same conceit to reunite an ensemble of college buddies for an amusing (if also maudlin) trip down memory lane. Here, only one disclosure packs any real punch, with everything else either heavily signposted or plainly insignificant.
It's a film of moments more than anything, some amusing, some touching and almost all heavily reliant on Bateman's signature reserved displeasure. Fey is predictably funny, though her scenes are often rounded out with unnecessary punchlines that feel more sitcom than cinema. Driver is the most enjoyable to watch, given his almost gleeful tendency to inflame every situation, and his occasional breaks into genuine emotion are where the film finds its most honest scenes.
It's all pleasant and nice and agreeable and, well, there you have it. A film described the same way you'd characterise a microwave soup. This Is Where I Leave You gets the job done, but there are so many better options out there.
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