Saturday, October 19, 2024

Goodrich: A Review

 

GOODRICH

Why? 

Of all the films that I have seen this year, I look at Goodrich and ask, "why?". What specifically about this sappy, predictable, rote film was so interesting that I was asked to review this specific film which I probably wouldn't have even bothered with? I saw the Goodrich trailer and barely paid attention to what I thought was a sappy little thing. Having now seen Goodrich, I can say that while the audience clearly liked it, I got the sense that I was watching a variation of Life Itself except that Goodrich was better than that. 

Struggling art gallery owner Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) gets a late-night call from his wife, Naomi. She tells him that she has checked herself into Journeys, a 90-day rehab center for her prescription and I think alcohol addiction. Goodrich is so unaware that he never realized that Naomi was popping pills, even though everyone else did. Even his tween children Billie (Vivian Lyra Blair) and Moses (Jacob Kopera) did. Now Andy has to raise his kids, something that he is a bit clueless about.

Not only does he have elementary school children, but he is also about to become a grandfather. His daughter from his first marriage, Grace (Mila Kunis) is about to give birth. Grace points out to her half-siblings that at 36 she is 27 years older than they are. That would make her old enough to be Billie and Moses' mother. Andy now has to balance a variety of situations. There is his impending grandfatherhood. There is the raising of his two younger children. There is trying to keep his art gallery afloat. 

That last part may come courtesy of Lola Thompson (Carmen Ejogo). Lola is a struggling singer who has recently inherited the paintings made by her late mother Teresa. Every art gallery and museum has gone after Teresa Thompson's paintings, and after seeing Andy with his family initially agrees to let him exhibit, curate and sell her mother's collection. I did say initially for a reason.

Will Andy find a successful balance in life? Will Grace heal the wounds of not having the relationship with her father that Billie and Moses have? Will Andy's new friend, gay actor and struggling father Pete (Michael Urie) help him heal? 

Goodrich is acceptable. It is not a terrible film. It certainly pleased the audience that I saw it with, especially the man who insisted on sitting next to me despite there being several seats open. This is not a bad film.

It is just a very standard one. Writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer made a film that has familiar beats, familiar characters, and familiar tropes. Perhaps the familiarity is fitting for a film about families. Goodrich is pretty much a sitcom with some dramatic moments.

In Goodrich, you have stock characters and situations. There is the male lead, so utterly clueless about raising kids that he cannot prepare anything close to a meal. For Halloween, he has Moses and Billie dress up as Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo, confusing the woman at whose house they stop at for trick-or-treat. There is the wise-beyond-her-years female child, able to speak eloquently about things she in real life wouldn't have the faintest idea what any of it was about. There is the bitter but loving older daughter. There is even the requisite gay best friend (or at least friend) who bizarrely and briefly thought that Andy wanted a romance with him.

This is a particularly odd and silly bit because Pete is aware that Andy is married to a woman and, apart from offering Pete some old wine and playing jazz records, has never indicated any type of interest outside a sympathetic ear to someone going through a similar situation.

Goodrich also wants us to feel the drama of whether or not Andy will land the Teresa Thompson estate. The film tries to make this a major turning point, even throwing in what is meant as a sad and surprising twist. However, it left me cold.  

I think I know why. It is the question of relatability. Here are these very wealthy people, with eccentric careers, whom I am supposed to care about. There are many films where I have not given much thought or interest about their careers, but somehow Goodrich felt so foreign to me. An art gallery owner. A man who lives in a vast house. A rehab center that looks like a spa. A man who sends his children to a very elite private school. Goodrich is the first film, in at least a long time, where I felt the term "first world problems" fit.

I speculated on how much better Goodrich could have been if you had transplanted the situations to a more middle-to-working class family. If Andy had been a mechanic or plumber or desk jockey, his struggles would have been harder. If Pete had been an accountant or bartender instead of a struggling actor with an epileptic son, his struggles would have been harder. How does one genuinely feel for someone whose biggest job crisis is whether he can sell a million-dollar painting? 

You could even keep the art gallery owner bit, but change it to someone who has decided to retire and close the gallery, specifically to "spend more time with his family" only to have to deal with his wife abandoning that family before he was ready to take that responsibility? Now Andy Goodrich has to see what "spending more time with his family" looks like, and he finds that it is not the romanticized version he had in mind. It is hard to raise young kids as a single father, and now he also has to oversee the final exhibition and closure of his life's work simultaneously. That makes for potential drama. Goodrich as it stands now, does not. 

The performances are fine. They are neither wonderful nor terrible. Michael Keaton does his best to make the drama work, and to his credit he does a fine job here. Keaton never goes crazy or to my memory even yell at anyone. That shows Keaton to make Andy a surprisingly even-keeled person, someone who takes the blows as they come. Mila Kunis makes a good effort, though I was never unaware that she was "acting". This, however, I put more on the script than on her. While I hated Billie's character, the stereotypical "child who thinks and speaks like an adult" role, I again put that on the script than the young actress.

Goodrich wants us to care, but I could not. It all feels so programmed, as if someone found a template for a domestic drama and just typed it in. Again, Goodrich is not a terrible film. It is just not a good one. For anyone curious, yes, Goodrich is better than Argylle.

DECISION: C-

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