Bill Murray Brings The Mirth To The Likable Throwaway ST. VINCENT

Now playing at both art houses and multiplexes:



ST. VINCENT (Dir. Theodore Melfi, 2014)

Bill Murray�s Vincent MacKenna is the latest in a long line of lovable losers that the actor has portrayed stretching back to his time as a Not Ready For Prime Time Player on Saturday Night Live in the �70s. 

Vincent, a schlubby Brooklynite, is a boozing, gambling, politically incorrect curmudgeon, with an Irish-tinged accent who regularly sleeps with a pregnant prostitute, played by Naomi Watts. The character is a bit older than Murray himself � by 4 years, enough to make him a Vietnam vet, which we see in fleeting glimpses of old photos that look like repurposed stills from STRIPES.

The film, which is a bit schlubby itself, concerns Murray befriending his 12-year old neighbor, played by the predictably precocious yet still winsome Jaeden Lieberher. The kid�s mother, a much more subdued than usual Melissa McCarthy, is recently divorced and overworked as a hospital tech so she hires Murray to look after her son. This is indeed a very questionable decision, but what�s a stressed-out single mother in an indie comedy to do?

Of course, Murray teaches the nerdy Lieberher how to fight, takes him along on his daily trips to the race track, and favorite bar and strip club, while they form an unlikely bond. However, in the overly familiar world of this movie, it�s a completely likely bond.

Writer/director Theodore Melfi in his feature length film debut is working very much in the vein of ABOUT A BOY, BAD SANTA, BAD GRANDPA, GRAND TORINO, and even UP � you know, movies in which a curmudgeon finds redemption via a relationship with a needy kid.

That�s not to say that ST. VINCENT isn�t an entertaining and likable experience. It�s great to see Murray in a much juicier starring role than his last lead (in 2012�s HYDE PARK ON THE HUDSON), and his tossed off delivery of such lines as �call a plumber� when Watts tells him her water broke is consistently amusing.

Lieberher�s career as a child actor is off to a good start here as he works well and has a good believable chemistry with Murray and McCarthy. It�s great as well to see McCarthy playing a reasonable, real person and not another over-the-top comic concoction (*cough* TAMMY).

Watts� Russian hooker character is initially pretty broad, but gets more and more depth as the film goes on. Her accent isn�t very convincing, but since Murray�s accent itself slips in several instances, it�s not really an issue.

The rest of the supporting cast is well chosen, especially Chris O�Dowd as a deadpan Catholic school teacher, and a subtly menacing Terrence Howard as Murray�s bookie. 30 Rock�s Scott Adsit also appears as McCarthy�s ex-husband, but I don�t recall if he even said anything significant.

ST. VINCENT�s soundtrack is cool too. Two catchy songs, �Everyone Hides,� and �Why Why Why,� by Wilco founder/front man Jeff Tweedy�s solo project Tweedy are prominently featured, along with apt tracks by Jefferson Airplane, The Webs, and The National. One of the film�s highlights has Murray singing along to the Bob Dylan classic �Shelter From the Storm� while tending to his yard, but not in a Nick the Lounge Singer way at all.

Millennials may think of the art rock musician, St. Vincent (who headlined the Hopscotch festival here in Raleigh last September), but the title refers to the premise of Lieberher being assigned a school project about modern saints in which he picks Murray�s Vincent to profile. This involves a very standard ending involving Murray getting applause by a packed church after the build up by quite a snazzy power-point presentation Lieberher somehow put together.

There�s an article in the latest Rolling Stone about how cool Murray is because he�s so beloved that he can get away with almost anything. And yeah, it does look like the man is living it up from the reports of party crashing, photo bombing, and other assorted shenanigans I seem to hear about daily, so much so that his film career feels secondary to his life just �Being Bill Murray� (the title of Gavin Edward�s RS piece).

So a film like this is a fine albeit formulaic showcase for Murray, but it�s nowhere near a great movie. It�s a likable throwaway best for a matinee. The late, great movie critic Gene Siskel often said when evaluating movies: �I ask myself if I would enjoy myself more watching a documentary of the same actors having dinner.�

The answer for ST. VINCENT in that regard is definitely that a documentary of Murray and his co-stars dining would be much better than this. A documentary about following Murray around for a while, a week, a month, a year, whatever, would also blow this away I bet. Somebody should get on that.

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Bill Hader And Kristen Wiig Excel As THE SKELETON TWINS

Now playing at an indie art house near me:

THE SKELETON TWINS

(Dir. Craig Johnson, 2014)

Former Saturday Night Live cast member Bill Hader has been in dozens of movies since 2006, but other than voicing the lead character in the CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS movies, most have been bit parts with credits like �Man at Store� or �Recumbent Biker� or brief cameos. 

Now Hader gets to carry a film in the flesh, along with co-star (and former SNL collegue) Kristen Wiig, in Craig Johnson�s second feature film THE SKELETON TWINS opening today at an indie art house near me.

Hader and Wiig star as Milo and Maggie, a couple of long estranged twins who get back in touch after both coincidentally attempt suicide on the same day. So yeah, it�s a darkly comic drama.

Wiig�s Maggie invites her brother to stay with her and her husband (Luke Wilson in �bro mode�) at their Nyack, New York home, until he can get back on his feet after being hospitalized for slashing his wrists (her attempt involving almost taking an overdose of pills she keeps secret).

Despite Wilson�s super nice guy demeanor, Wiig has been sleeping with others (most recently her douche scuba instructor played by Boyd Holbrook), and is taking birth control pills while her husband thinks they�re trying to have a baby. Again, this is info she keeps to herself so that she can seem to be the stable sister, while she treats her brother like a �special needs kid,� as Hader�s Milo puts it.

Meanwhile Hader purposely runs into his former high school English teacher (Modern Fmaily�s Ty Burrell in a neatly nuanced performance), now working at a bookstore. Burrell, a conflicted, closeted man, had seduced Hader when he was his student and lost his job over the inappropriate relationship.

One of the most amusing sequences in the film concerns Johanna Gleason, a veteran of a few Woody Allen films and just about every sitcom in the last 30 years, as Hader and Wiig�s mother, a neglectful mother turned New Age guru, being invited for dinner by Hader to Wiig�s chagrin. The twins� father had committed suicide when they were 14, and their mother appears to have checked out of parenting as a result. This makes for a realistically edgy and awkward, as well as wickedly funny, dinner scene that anybody with tension in their family can relate to.

Another standout scene has Hader and Wiig clowning around on nitrous oxide at the dental office she works at. Their SNL training most prepared them for this bit, which proves that a comedy drama about suicide can effectively fit in fart jokes.

It�s a joy to see this very believable brother and sister pairing come together to lip synch and dance to Starship�s �Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now,� even if you can�t stand the song, and when they fight towards the end of the film � really taking it all out at each other � their acting is so sharp that I felt like I was violating their privacy watching them.

Hader has shown time and time again that he�s a first class impressionist, and a reliably goofy presence in many projects, but his performance as Milo is a career best that shows the layers of depth the actor has to share. It recalls his former SNL co-star Will Forte�s fine dramatic work in NEBRASKA last year, and makes me want to see more of these funny folks try on more serious roles.

Wiig has carried movies before - most notably her breakthrough 2010 comedy smash BRIDESMAIDS � but this may be my favorite of her screen roles. Wiig�s Maggie is a sad mess of a human being, as screwed up as her brother (possibly more even) that has a real feeling sense of humor, but the worried look in her eyes gives her inner torment away. Her character�s turns late in the film are heartbreaking, and a little hard to watch, but Wiig movingly pulls it off beautifully.

THE SKELETON TWINS is a well made, well written (it well deserved the Screenwriting Award that director Johnson and co-writer Mark Heyman won at Sundance), and extremely well acted film that may very well make my top 10 list of the year�s best. It�s also the most emotionally charged movie starring a couple of SNL cast members since�well, ever.

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OBVIOUS CHILD: A Plucky Abortion Rom Com

Opening today at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, the Chelsea Theatre in Chapel Hill, and the Rialto Theater in Raleigh:



OBVIOUS CHILD (Dir. Gillian Robespierre, 2014)

With its small comedy club scenes, and
shabby New York apartment settings, it sometimes seems throughout this film
like comedienne Jenny Slate has hi-jacked an episode of Louie.



Gilliam
Robespierre�s writing/directing debut also has got a Girls thing going on too,
with its navel gazing mindset, and that Slate and Gaby Hoffmann, who plays her
roommate, have both appeared on the popular HBO program.

But the Sundance comedy OBVIOUS CHILD, aka �that rom com about abortion,� mixes its own affable, very amusing sensibility in with these familiar elements, largely due to Slate�s neurotically nerdy performance as a Brooklyn comic who gets knocked up.

The film begins with Slate getting dumped (�dumped up with� as she puts it) after delivering what could be considered a way too personal stand-up routine. Adding to her self-aware sad sack existence is that she will soon lose her day job as a clerk because the bookstore she works at is closing (the Greenwich Village store - Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Books, which actually exists and isn�t closing).

A drunken one-night stand with a nice guy stranger (Jake Lacy, from the last season of The Office U.S.) leaves our heroine with a bun in the oven, but being young, messed up, and way in over her head, Slate decides to have an abortion, scheduled for Valentine�s Day.

Going through the motions, and emotions of ending a pregnancy, the film never makes pro or anti-abortion statements. Nobody tries to talk her out of it, there aren�t sign wielding protesters at the clinic, nothing like that. Slate�s mother, Polly Draper of Thirtysomething fame, even makes a relieved joke when she�s told: �I thought you were going to tell me you were moving to California!�

I, like many, was first introduced to Slate on Saturday Night Live. She was a cast member for one year (2009-2010), and will go down in SNL history for dropping the �F-bomb� (in her debut sketch called �Biker Chick Chat� no less). After that she�s had memorable turns on the aforementioned Girls, Parks and Recreation (as Aziz Ansari�s crazy on again/off again girlfriend Mona-Lisa Saperstein), and the Showtime series House of Lies.

This movie most likely won�t make Slate a household name, but it�s a solid first starring vehicle for her. If you can get through all her fart jokes, you�ll find a winning funny personality especially in touching scenes with Richard Kind as her schlubby father.

Also standing out is a hilariously profane drunk dialing sequence in which Slate repeatedly leaves messages with her ex as she goes further and further off the deep end. Her convincingly over-the-top acting is combined with some deft editing (by Casey Brooks and Jacob Craycroft).

The up and coming actress also holds her own with David Cross as a somewhat sleazy fellow comedian, Gabe Liedman as a much nicer fellow comic, and certainly Lacy, who has a quick-witted sense of humor that appealingly fits with Slate�s. There�s undeniable chemistry between the couple when they come together on what Lacy calls �the best worst Valentine's Day I've ever had.�

Robespierre refashioned her 2009 short film of the same name, which also starred Slate, into this full length feature, but at just 83 minutes it feels like an extended short. I chuckled a lot and loved its crude, goofy energy, but it is a tad slight on the narrative side. Some characters and tangents could�ve stood a little more fleshing out.

So it�s a tad under-cooked, but OBVIOUS CHILD, named after the 1991 Paul Simon song, has heart and humor a plenty. It may be a hard sell to some folks because of its abortion theme and possible unfamiliarity with Slate, but I bet most art house film goers will come out of Robespierre�s plucky little comedy smiling.

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