Louis C.K. and Joe List‘s Fourth of July screens tonight (7:30 pm) at Manhattan’s Beacon theatre. Followed by a q & a. HE will be sitting somewhere in the orchestra section. The word so far is “good but a bit meh.”
Best line: “Going home sober is always tough…the folks will push your buttons….hell, they installed them.”
Second best line: “You’re comin’ up on what…two and a half years? You show up late, I haven’t heard from you…you’re teetering. Either lean forward, take the next step or lean back, fall down a flight of stairs.”
Review by THR‘s Frank Scheck: “Fourth of July turns out to be something we would have never expected from its director/co-writer — bland. [Pic focuses on the kind] of dysfunctional family gathering is the stuff of endless autobiographical dramas, saddling Fourth of July with a familiar feeling further exacerbated by its lack of incisive dialogue and well-drawn characterizations.
“It doesn’t take long for the numerous scenes featuring the family members behaving boorishly to feel repetitive. The intended dramatic moments, such as Jeff’s seemingly emotionally closed-off father (Robert Walsh) suddenly revealing surprising depths, don’t really land. And a pizza parlor encounter in which Jeff miraculously overcomes his doubts about fatherhood with the help of a brief pep talk isn’t remotely convincing.
“The film feels like it must have been personally therapeutic for its star and co-writer, but List never manages to make us relate to his character’s perpetual navel-gazing. And while he’s necessarily hampered by playing someone suffering from depression, his monochromatic deadpan performance proves more tedious than involving.
“C.K. has populated the film with a number of his fellow comedians, who occasionally garner some mild laughs with their raucous asides, but genuine humor is in short supply. If this undeniably talented multi-hyphenate really wanted to make an impact with his first film since the unreleased I Love You Daddy, perhaps he should have delved into his own psyche instead.”
