Not half bad in the usual no-laugh-funny way. I was moderately amused, I mean. It’s cool that it’s performed by “real” WME agents. Who’s the adrenaline guy playing the young Ari Gold?
Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg didn’t exactly burn up the box-office last winter. Those who went looking for a hah-hah Ben Stiller comedy encountered a sly, subtle and somber flick about a morose, self-absorbed 40 year-old guy looking at the downslope of a life. It was one of the finest character-driven, psychologically acute, no-laugh-funny flicks in a long while, but the “just entertain us” crowd didn’t show. Greenberg racked up $4,234,170 in ticket sales, and then slinked off to the showers.
(l.) Greenberg Bluray jacket; (r.) theatrical release poster.
On 7.23 Greenberg returns on DVD/Bluray, and I guess you can’t blame the Universal Home Video marketers for throwing out the theatrical one-sheet and trying to persuade potential customers that Greenberg is a nice, slightly nutty, slap-happy relationship comedy. Stiller and Greta Gerwig are pictured as some kind of shaggy-cerebral fun couple, and…well, you just have to admire the chutzpah. What they’re doing here is almost on the level of that mock Shining trailer from three or four years ago.
I think Greenberg is a “fun” movie, sort of. You just have to be hip enough (jaded enough? perverse enough?) to get it. I wound up seeing Greenberg four times, and felt amused, oddly tickled, and quietly fascinated each time. I therefore shared the reactions of A.O. Scott (“I love this movie!) and Joe “JoMo” Morgenstern (“extremely entertaining”). The people who loved the MTV Movie Awards are going to hate it, of course, but let’s hope Greenberg catches on with at least a portion of the Netflix crowd and stays alive in critics’ heads so they’ll remember to put it on their ten-best lists next December.
With the apparent theatrical demise of I Love You, Phillip Morris, the somewhat weird, no-laugh-funny but certainly respectable Jim Carrey-Ewan MacGregor gay farce, being reported, recapping my original 1.19.09 Sundance review seems fair:
“The tone of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa‘s I Love You Phillip Morris is hard to describe. It’s a kind of dark comedy (i.e., there are bits that are intended to draw laughter), but since it’s a tale of obsessive gay loony love there’s really not that much to ‘laugh’ at,” I began.
“But there’s conviction in it — the emotions are as real as it gets — and the performances by Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as the lovers are intense and out-there and fully grounded. Nobody’s putting anyone on, I mean.
“The tone is somewhere between high-toned soap opera and
“Love is strange, silly, demeaning, glorious, heartbreaking. A drug and a tidal wave that can destroy as easily as restore. And I Love You Phillip Morris is not laughing at this. At all. It’s a movie with balls and dicks and loads of heart and soul.
“I like this line from the Sundance notes: ‘As a primer on the irresistible power of a man who is either insane or in love (is there a difference?), I Love You Phillip Morris surely serves to remind us of the resilience of the human spirit.’
“Longtime writing partners Ficarra and Requa are making their directing debut with this. It’s based based on the true-life tale of Steve Russell (Carrey), a onetime married police officer turned gay Texan con man, and his passionate love he shares with ‘blonde southern queer’ named Phillip Morris (McGregor) whom he meets in prison, where he’s been sent for credit card fraud.
“Carrey’s website says that ‘after reading the script, he immediately signed to do the movie, explaining that there have been only three scripts that he truly felt compelled to do — The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and this.
“‘The film had a very low budget, estimated to be just $14 million,’ it reads. ‘It was initially to be directed by Gus Van Sant, but he dropped out to make Milk. So Carrey agreed to let Ficarra and Requa direct. The financing is from director Luc Besson‘s EuropaCorp. The filmmakers hope to sell domestic rights at the Sundance Film Festival.”
I don’t know where the below photo below was taken (the guy who sent it to me didn’t say, and he hasn’t answered my follow-up e-mails) but I’m really, really hoping it wasn’t taken at the Angelika in lower Manhattan. If it was this would imply that supposedly ahead-of-the-curve New Yorkers can be just as stubbornly conservative in their tastes as hinterland types. Please tell me it was taken in Orlando or Natchez or Des Moines.
I knew when I first saw Greenberg that it obviously wasn’t Night at the Museum, but I figured that the usual indie suspects would discover and support it, and that it might eventually find its way to cult success as one of the finest character-driven, psychologically acute, no-laugh-funny flicks in a long while.
There’s really no disputing that Greenberg is one of the best films released this year (along with Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer), and yet guys are bolting out of Greenberg showings and going up to theatre managers and saying “I want a refund”? What?
If I didn’t like Greenberg I would slink out quietly and keep my feelings to myself and my friends. I would at least defer to its reputation among most critics and tastemakers and say, “Okay, fine, critics and their weird tastes…but it’s not for me.” I certainly wouldn’t turn my animosity into a vocal lobby rant.
People not liking or recommending a film is standard, but this kind of hostility, I suspect, means Greenberg is touching some kind of nerve. It’s not just about a somewhat dislikable neurotic, but about a guy who’s at best treading water at age 40 and looking at a lot more of the same as he gets older. Speaking as the older brother of a guy whose life ended tragically because of this syndrome, I know this is about as scary as it gets. There are millions of people out there who are not that different from Ben Stiller‘s character, or who know people who are in this kind of head-jail.
As I said in my initial review, “Greenberg is about what a lot of 30ish and 40ish people who haven’t achieved fame and fortune are going through, or will go through. It’s dryly amusing at times, but it’s not kidding around.”
Many people feel as I do, of course, but Greenberg is clearly a major polarizer. It’s all evident on the Greenberg IMDB chat boards. Here’s how one fellow (i.e., “Famous Mortimer,” the guy who sent me the photo) defends it:
“I think it is provoking such strong levels of resentment from viewers because it is a movie very much of these times but not made in the style of these times. It exposes the toxic levels of conceitedness and alienation today with the sincerity and empathy of ’70’s films by Ashby, Altman and Allen.
“First off, it’s a story about people. There is no high concept or shoehorned stake-raising set piece. Viewers either have the patience to connect with the human pain on display or they are lost. Unlike Sideways, there is no charming countryside setting or buddy comedy hijinks to punch up the mood.
“Second, the dialogue is the action. Only when the viewer is willing to think over the dialogue will characters’ seemingly ambiguous motivations and back-stories become clear. There’s no juicy monologue or nauseating flashback to convey these points. Instead, the viewer comes upon them over the course of the film in the form of passing references made by various characters. It is up to us to take these bits and pieces together and unlock the character revelations for ourselves. No more spoon-feeding cinema.
“Third, this film is a labor of love. That means idiosyncratic details are to be found at every level of its making. Only by thinking these details over and feeling the connections between them do we appreciate what the movie is trying to do. It’s a really thoughtful and heartfelt experience.”
One of my favorite “no laugh funny” SNL skits in a long time. Because the attitude is so ’50s cultish, I suppose, and indifferent to the fact that 98% of SNL viewers don’t know and couldn’t care less who Vincent Price, Ed Wood, Katherine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe or James Dean were, and therefore couldn’t possibly get the no-laugh jokes. I didn’t even chuckle at the humor — I just sat there stone-faced — but I thought it was funny.
And I don’t know what it is about Andy Samberg doing his Mark Wahlberg-talking-to-animals bit, but this is the thing that will define Wahlberg among joke-tellers for the rest of his life, like “you dirty rat” did for James Cagney and “Judy, Judy, Judy” did for Cary Grant.
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