THE MEDDLER
Sony Pictures Classics
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya, d-based on Rotten Tomatoes
Grade: C+
Director: Lorene Scafaria
Written by: Lorene Scafaria
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Rose Byrne, J.K. Simmons, Jerrod Carmichael, Cecily Strong, Lucy Punch
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 2/18/16
Opens: April 22, 2016
If you wrote a script for a movie that closely represented events in your life—in effect making a biopic not about Napoleon or Jesse Owens but about a run-of-the-person like most of us—do you think you could interest a solid audience to eavesdrop on your existence? I certainly don’t think my own career as a high-school teacher, a student at a fine college, now a film reviewer could attract the kind of crowd that Donald Trump seems to dig up. But Lorene Scafaria, who wrote and directs “The Meddler,” has apparently hoped to do just that, to bring in an audience interested in seeing how she coped with her father’s death, or rather how her mother dealt with her own husband’s demise; her rising career as a scriptwriter, her mother’s generous donation to a young friend to enable her to have a classy wedding ceremony, and her mom’s volunteering at a hospital in L.A. That essentially is what goes on for the 102 minutes of “The Meddler,” a story whose title might make you think of an adult who acts more like the wicked stepmother or the mother-in-law from hell but which actually describes a woman who, having been widowed, has considerable time on her hands and uses it to pry into her daughter’s life and who also meddles, in a good way, in the career of a salesperson at a high tech showroom among other experiences.
Ms. Scafaria did have one big thing going for her, and that’s bringing in Susan Sarandon, one of our acting treasures, to play the title role, Sarandon, who appears in virtually every scene as Marnie Minervine, who goes through her role with the Brooklyn accent that shaped her character’s upbringing, could give the impression that the movie is a vanity project for her rather than for the writer-director. She is a marvel, granted, but a film needs more than a top actress to connect, to resonate with an audience, and “The Meddler,” which sails along at an even keel without much punch, is not that kind of project.
Marnie has become a transplant from Brooklyn to the Greater Los Angeles area where she has apparently moved from a provincial neighborhood to a wide-open sunny paradise that she compares to Disneyland. Not coincidentally, she now lives close to her daughter Lori (Rose Byrne) and uses every opportunity to meddle in the young, successful career woman’s life, whether that be trying to get her ex-boyfriend (Jason Ritter) to go back to her or spending much too much time on the phone when she is not actually pushing herself into the young woman’s apartment (she has the key). She even attends a baby shower, meeting her girl’s friends and dispensing reproductive advice to the ensemble.
She seeks advice from an i-Phone salesman (Jerrod Carmichael), but thinking that age bestows wisdom, she turns the tables by advising him on why he should go to law school, then giving him and his brother a ride in the Lexus that had belonged to her husband. In a scene that could have been mined for belly laughs, she has sessions with her daughter’s psychotherapist (Amy Landecker), greeted by the usual therapeutic silence by the Freudian, who maintains a cryptic smile during the sessions. Think of Meryl Streep’s Lee’s rollicking sessions with Charlotte Samit, a psychiatrist played by Margo Martindale, in Jerry Zaks’s “Marvin’s Room.”
Marnie indulges in a romance with retired policeman Randy Zipper (J.K. Simmons), warming up to him in a pair of motorcycle rides but at the same time meets an advance by another suitor who had given her a lift home by punching him several times in the stomach and head. Even attempts at slapstick come off subdued in a film that, without Sarandon, could have failed miserably but which appears to be holding back from more melodramatic actions as though trying too hard to cater to an arty audience.
Rated PG-13. 102 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – C-
Acting – B+
Technical – B+
Overall – C+
