Tag Archives: Paul Weitz

Movie Review ~ Moving On

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Two old friends reconnect at a funeral and decide to get revenge on the widower who messed with them decades before.
Stars: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Malcolm McDowell, Richard Roundtree, Sarah Burns, Catherine Dent
Director: Paul Weitz
Rated: R
Running Length: 85 minutes
TMMM Score: (7/10)
Review:  When something works, you stick with it, and obviously, the chemistry between stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin hasn’t waned since they (re)joined forces in 2015 for their popular Netflix show Grace and Frankie. Not long after that show finished its run in early 2022, the two were on to 80 for Brady, bringing Oscar winners Sally Field and Rita Moreno along for the ride. That film was the low-grade hit it was intended to be, especially among its target audience (matinee crowds). Those same viewers will likely be interested in what shenanigans Tomlin and Fonda are up to now.

It should be noted that Moving On is being marketed as a much different film than it is, and that’s too bad. To look at it, a paying customer might think it’s a comedy with an edgier premise allowing the duo to play to their usual schtick when in reality, it’s more of a darker drama the women approach with a far more serious stance. Of their collaborations from the past decade, this denotes their best work together (as flimsy though it may be) and, in the case of Tomlin, some of her most resonant screen representation in decades. 

Attending the funeral of her best friend from college she hasn’t seen in years, Claire (Fonda, Peace, Love & Misunderstanding) has come to do more than grieve. She has a score to settle with Howard (Malcolm McDowell, Bombshell), the late woman’s husband, and she believes the only way to make him pay is to murder him. As she’s working out the finer details of her plan, Evelyn (Tomlin, Admission), another college friend, also appears with a revelation of her own. It’s from shared grief that Evelyn and Claire pick up where they left off years ago, alternatively planning Howard’s murder while evaluating their lives and missed opportunities.

Writer/director Paul Weitz has had quite the rollercoaster career. Starting by co-directing American Pie with his brother Chris in 1999 and recently directing Tomlin in her award-worthy performance in 2015’s Grandma, I’d be willing to bet he wrote Evelyn with her in mind. How else would it feel perfectly tailored to Tomlin’s strengths as both a wry comic and an actress able to draw deep emotion from unique line readings? Fonda’s role is a nice change of pace (but not a nice change of wig, I must say), even if it’s once again mainly centered around her relationships with men. It’s frustrating to see Fonda still playing roles that have her sitting around figuring out why her marriages don’t work out. Her scenes with an ex-husband (Richard Roundtree, Shaft) are pleasant enough but feel like distractions.

When the film takes wild shifts in tone (earning its R rating with some out-of-left-field blue dialogue), the viewer can feel like they are getting whiplash, and the last half of Moving On is hard to nail down. Weitz loses the thread when trying to tie everything together, but at least Fonda and Tomlin are there to do what they can with the pattern that’s been woven so far. It’s a nice image if overall incomplete in design.

The Silver Bullet ~ Bel Canto

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Synopsis: A world famous opera singer becomes trapped in a hostage situation when she’s invited to perform for a wealthy industrialist in South America.

Release Date: September 14, 2018

Thoughts: It’s been four years since Julianne Moore won her long overdue Oscar for Still Alice and she’s largely avoided the Best Actress curse popping up in interesting, if underperforming, films like Wonderstruck and Suburbicon.  In 2018 she’s back with two interesting projects: Gloria, a US remake of a popular Chilean film and this adaptation of Ann Patchett’s bestseller which casts Moore as a opera singer who becomes a hostage and political chess piece in a South American uprising.  Written for the screen and directed by Paul Weitz (Admission, Grandma, Being Flynn) and co-starring Ken Watanabe (Godzilla) I have to say this looks more important than entertaining.  Also, while I’m glad they are being transparent that Moore’s singing voice is dubbed by the legendary Renee Fleming based on the few shots of her singing I’m a bit nervous it’s going to look too fake-y.  In the end, it’s Moore that appeals to me so I’m always interested in her work…but Bel Canto feels like it has an uphill battle in front of it.

Movie Review ~ Grandma

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grandma

The Facts:

Synopsis: A teenager facing an unplanned pregnancy seeks help from her acerbic grandmother, a woman who is long estranged from her daughter.

Stars: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Sam Elliott, Judy Greer, Marcia Gay Harden, Lauren Tom, Elizabeth Peña, Colleen Camp, John Cho, Nat Wolff, Laverne Cox, Sarah Burns, Judy Geeson, Mo Aboul-Zelof

Director: Paul Weitz

Rated: R

Running Length: 79 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (7/10)

Review:  Were it not such a competitive year in the Best Actress Oscar race, Lily Tomlin may have become the 13th EGOT.  Winning the grand slam of show business means that you’ve received an Emmy, Grammy, Tony, and Oscar and Tomlin is but an EGT at the present time. Though her performance in Grandma gives the comic actress the kind of star turn chance to shine that comes along rarely for actors/actresses of any age, I fear that it will be overshadowed by performances with more commercial appeal.

Not to say that there isn’t a place for this dark comedy or Tomlin’s performance in end of the year accolades but at a scant 79 minutes the film feels like an extended short film rather than a fully produced three act structured piece.  Writer/director Paul Weitz (Being Flynn) breaks the film into six chapters, seemingly editing around potential commercial breaks as we follow one eventful day for an acerbic septuagenarian and her teenage granddaughter.

A folksy poet still not over the death of her long-time lover a year prior, the film opens on Elle (Tomlin, Admission, another Weitz film) breaking up with her much younger onetime fan-now-girlfriend (Judy Greer, Jurassic World and every other movie in 2015) in a most hurtful way.  She’s barely showered post-breakup when her 18-year-old granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) shows up needing money to pay for an abortion.  Without the available funds to help (she’s long since decided to live off the grid, cutting up her credits cards), she instead offers to track down the money by any means necessary.

That leaves the film open to explore many routes to the same destination.  The careless baby daddy (Nat Woff, Paper Towns) is solicited for money and given a harsh lesson in respecting your elders at the same time while former friends (the late Elisabeth Peña and the overrated Laverne Cox) of Elle’s are asked to make good on debts. Finally, a trip to see a mysterious man (Sam Elliott, I’ll See You in My Dreams) from Elle’s past leads to the film’s most emotionally charged sequence.  By the time we get to meet Sage’s mom and Elle’s estranged daughter (a tightly wound Marcia Gay Harden, Fifty Shades of Grey) we’ve come along on a darkly humorous journey filled with a fair share of emotional truths.

Wearing her own clothes, driving her own car, and playing a (I think) less emotionally stagnant version of herself, Tomlin breezes through the movie with a tough charm and fragile core that belies her hardened exterior.  While her scenes with Greer lack a certain kind of chemistry, the sparks fly in her interactions with Elliott.  Elliott remains one of our great underrated actors and he’s damn good here as a man burned by Elle in the past for reasons I won’t divulge.  Garner is appropriately defiant as the teenager who knows she can’t care for a baby and Harden takes a character introduced as a sweaty harpy and manages to caress it into something deeper.

Running shorter than a visit with your own grandparents, the movie actually feels longer than it is.  That’s not always a bad thing but there are some unexpected dips in momentum that stymie what could have been a film with a bit more pep.  Still, any chance for Tomlin to get some time as a long overdue leading lady (her first leading role in 27 years!) is fine by me.  She may not make it to full EGOT status, but after great success with her Netflix show and now this, her 2015 was filled with numerous wins.

The Silver Bullet ~ Grandma

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grandma

Synopsis: Self-described misanthrope Elle Reid has her protective bubble burst when her 18-year-old granddaughter, Sage, shows up needing help.

Release Date: August 21, 2015

Thoughts:  It’s been a good year for Lily Tomlin.  She recently scored another Emmy nomination for her work in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie and while I felt that the Netflix show had some serious problems, Tomlin’s aging hippie helped to make the series more palatable.

Even better news is that advanced buzz on her performance in Grandma has been great…though it does creep me out that some critics have called it a “career-capping performance”…yeesh…she’s not dead yet people!  Directed by Paul Weitz (Admission, Being Flynn) and co-starring Julia Garner (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Judy Greer (Jurassic World), Sam Elliott (I’ll See You in My Dreams) and Marcia Gay Harden (Fifty Shades of Grey) this road-trip dramedy could find Tomlin attending the Oscars in addition to the Emmys.

 

Movie Review ~ Admission

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admission

The Facts:

Synopsis: A Princeton admissions officer who is up for a major promotion takes a professional risk after she meets a college-bound alternative school kid who just might be the son she gave up years ago in a secret adoption.

Stars: Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Nat Wolff, Lily Tomlin, Michael Sheen, Wallace Shawn, Gloria Reuben

Director: Paul Weitz

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 117 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review:  The ads for Admission might make you think this is a true blue comedy and with bona-fide funny stars Fey and Rudd in the mix you could be forgiven if you go into the movie with the wrong expectations.  I read several reviews that trounced the film for not having enough laughs considering the people involved and that’s not entirely fair because Admission is more of a dramedy than your typical comedy and shouldn’t be judged on the same laugh-o-meter as, say, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.  Actually, strike that…even with a smaller amount of laughs Admission has at least 70% more chuckles than that recent bomb.

Anyway, what Admission does right is allowing Fey and Rudd to bring their own flair to the film and that’s when it tends to work the best.  Though it’s about fifteen minutes too long and winds up leaving the audience a bit unfulfilled, there’s a decent amount of good material that gives the movie some heft. 

Perhaps she’s been playing Liz Lemon on TV’s 30 Rock too long or it could be that she’s ever the tiniest bit overexposed, but Fey has an uphill battle here that never really works out like it should.  She’s a Princeton admission counselor that’s as by the book as they come.  Her life is perfectly simple in its planning and assembly…that is until in the span of a few days she gets dumped by her wimp boyfriend (Sheen, looking uncomfortably rumpled) and informed by Rudd’s alternative school teacher that a prospective Princeton student may be the child she gave up for adoption 18 years prior. 

The set-up is nothing new and the skilled audience member will see what parts of Fey’s ordered life will be thrown into turmoil by her recent string of revelations long before the movie chooses to upend them.  With a film as predictable as this, it’s important to have the right type of actors in the mix to make it palatable and that’s where director Weitz (Being Flynn, In Good Company, About a Boy) scores some points.

Though Fey can’t totally shed her recognizable persona, she has a few interesting moments in early scenes as she’s interacting with potential applicants that take shape before her as she’s reading their application stats.  There’s no denying Fey has the charm and wit to make a film work but perhaps if Admission had been less scenes with her running into her ex and a few more that dealt with her own fractured relationship with her mother (a scene stealing Tomlin) a better film, and consequently performance, may have emerged.

It also doesn’t help that Rudd’s role winds up feeling extraneous in the grand scheme of things. Though there’s a misguided attempt to create chemistry between the actors I would have preferred his role to have been smaller or played by someone other than Rudd (who otherwise bounces back nicely from December’s  truly awful This is 40) to help shift the focus back onto Fey’s character.  Every time the movie diverts to show some of the problems with Rudd’s character, I longed for it to relate more to what was going on in Fey’s plotline.

In the end I wasn’t crazy about the direction the movie took, feeling that it robbed Fey’s character of some dignity and the audience from a real resolution.  There’ s a Hollywood resolution firmly in place that in hindsight probably was pre-destined, but it’s frustrating to see some very good talent working with slightly mediocre material.  Even though it’s handsomely made, put Admission on the waitlist until you can watch it in the comfort of your own home and give it your own final grade.

The Silver Bullet ~ Admission

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admission

Synopsis: A Princeton admissions officer who is up for a major promotion takes a professional risk after she meets a college-bound alternative school kid who just might be the son she gave up years ago in a secret adoption.

Release Date:  March 8, 2013

Thoughts: I’m going to preface this by saying that I love Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.  Both are engaging, creative actors who have helped put a squeaky shine on many a dull film.  That being said, I’m ready for both actors to go outside of their comfort zone.  With Fey’s 30 Rock in its final season and Rudd’s career doing just fine, how about the two actors try for something a bit unexpected…just to feel the waters.  I felt the same way with the Fey/Steve Carrell collaboration of Date Night…two actors that could do this kind of role in their sleep and whose presence in an unremarkable looking movie just smells of easy money.  Director Paul Weitz has a nice track record and I’m sure this will be perfectly entertaining – but I do want to see Fey and Rudd step it up a bit.