M, 111 minutes
3 Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
Andy Goodrich receives a call from his absent wife in the middle of the night, the only time when he might actually listen. Even in the dark, the glittering city skyline of Los Angeles beckons through the bedroom window. Well can we imagine that even when not on site running his art gallery and dealing with its business pressures, the demands get in the way of being father to nine-year-old twins.
It is fatherhood that writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer has in her sights here, with Michael Keaton in the lead role. As an actor who shot to fame early in Batman and Beetlejuice and has enjoyed a recent resurgence in Birdman, he is an interesting casting choice with that hint of having seen better days. Life in the fast lane of LA, as an actor or a businessman, would have to be a tough gig.
Keaton is still great at making personal crises look rather funny. His comic timing, as he navigates his new life as a solo parent is a hoot, even while we see it coming. He forgets to pack the school lunches, he is late for pick up after school, he forgets to organise the babysitter, and then, when available for his kids, he chooses the 1940s black-and-white classic Casablanca for ‘movie night’. Andy just isn’t in tune with his parental responsibilities. His twins, Mose (Jacob Kopera) and Billie (Vivien Lyra Blair) especially Billie, already know it, and the 30-something, newly pregnant daughter from his first marriage, Grace (Mila Kunis) is right across his schtick.
Navigating life as a solo parent, Keaton’s comic timing is a hoot
The personality traits that Goodrich will need to modify are predictable, needing to accept and celebrate his female side by attending a feminist night, shedding his latent homophobia with a fellow parent, valorising love and relationships over work and success. Meyers-Shyer’s intelligent script makes the familiar issues an interesting watch, with laugh out loud moments to boot. She says that she wrote her script with no one but Michael Keaton in mind. One wonders what the film’s fortunes might have looked like in the hands of an actor without a flair for complexity and less accomplished comic skills. It’s a smooth, polished production overall, gliding from scene to scene with a tinkling background piano.
As it becomes clear that the movie is less about Goodrich and the wife who has left him, taking herself off to rehab and making herself uncontactable for 90 days, and so much more about his relationship with daughter Grace holding him to account. It is easy to see that younger daughter Billie, already a precocious 9-year-old is already wised up to him.
Grace, the eldest child by 27 years, has seen it all before. Andy split from his first family when she was eleven and she is about to become a mother herself. She has wisely chosen a husband, ENT specialist Peter, who is the opposite of Andy, a soothing presence while she becomes more febrile and anxious as her baby reaches term. A few little glimpses of her impatience and blunt language, suggest she is her father’s daughter, nonetheless.
An intelligent script makes familiar issues an interesting watch, with laugh-out-loud moments
It is why the dynamic between Grace and Andy is so interesting. Grace’s monologue in front of the hospital giving him an, undeserved in this instance, but overall justified ticking-off for being late when he had offered to give her a lift to see her specialist.
We could have done without the occasional purple patches of sentiment and new age self-discovery, but Grace’s combative spirit pulls the movie away from this, with raw emotions as a mother-to-be and conflicted feelings about her father. She is still the daughter who once raged against Andy’s inattention with emotions that do have an authenticity about them. Never available, never at home, he made her simultaneously mad at him and in need of his love and approval. Now she nails him at every turn.
While Kunis and Keaton make a good pair of familial adversaries, father-to-be Pete also pulls the movie back from its sentimental tendencies with a neat little summing-up, full of life’s lived wisdom, of how he expects his future with Grace will unfold.
As the decorated trees grow in prominence in the closing scenes, Goodrich sits in the box seat as family entertainment as we head into Christmas.
First published in the Canberra Times on 24 November 2024. Jane’s reviews are also published at Rotten Tomatoes