Have you ever been with a friend who ends up taking you to someone’s house and then, suddenly, you are surrounded by uninteresting people you don’t know and are forced to nod along and pay attention to their boring conversation? If your answer is yes, and you also find this to be a pleasant experience, might I recommend this excruciating new drama from Joe Swanberg.
Tim (Jake Johnson) is a teacher and Lee (Rosemarie DeWitt) is a yoga instructor. With their young son, they are housesitting for one of Lee’s wealthy clients. When Tim is poking around out back he finds a rusted revolver and a bone. He decides he wants to start digging up the yard, because it’s more important for a movie to have SYMBOLISM than for their characters to act like recognisable human beings.
Lee takes off with the baby for a few days to visit her parents and, ostensibly, for Tim to do his taxes. (Yes, this movie is so damn dull that “doing your taxes” is a plot point.) Tim invites his buddies over and they sit around and drink IPAs until one of the gang (a beardo Sam Rockwell) gets two women there. Anna Kendrick arrives with the sole purpose of swimming in her bra and panties, and Brie Larson (Max) shows up to be more quiet and therefore approachable and therefore a foul temptress. The night goes on and, in lieu of anything dramatic, an electronic score by Dan Romer (Beasts of the Southern Wild) thuds and thrums on the soundtrack to give the illusion these sequences have weight.
The next day Lee ends up having time on her own and meets Orlando Bloom who a) scares off a drunk and b) cooks her a steak. They kiss on the beach while Tim digs more bones, smokes pot and lets Max wear his wife’s clothes. Clearly Tim and Lee both yearn for a break from their marriage, but neither show any depth of defining characteristics, other than some concerns about money. No wonder they’re unhappy – you’d be unhappy too if you were married to one of these bores. At first I thought the movie was some sort of meta commentary on the desperation of blank people without interior lives, but in time I grew to realize it was a legitimate cri de coeur. A moment of alleged revelation features a character (dropped out of nowhere) coaxing Lee to look through a telescope and gaze at the beauty of Saturn. As far as I’m concerned, this whole movie is set on another planet.
