Viewers will find solace in Melissa Leo’s magic.
WELCOME TO THE RILEYS was for this reviewer all about Melissa Leo’s performance of Lois Riley and her delightful transformation in the film - the fiery-haired actress consistently delivers. James Gandolfini (adopting an uneven Midwestern accent) and Kristen Stewart deliver passable performances, but in the end we’ve seen a kindly man save a beautiful stripper from herself so, so many times before that the end result just isn’t entirely original.
In the movie we find Doug and Lois (Gandolfini and Leo) in an unhappy marriage, having grown apart since losing their teenage daughter in a car accident eight years before. Doug leaves his agoraphobic and practically zombified wife behind for a business trip to New Orleans, where meets a 17-year-old runaway (Kristen Stewart), and the two form a platonic bond.
The movie gets off to a murderously slow start as it spends way too much time establishing the couple’s unhappiness in a drab section of suburban Indianapolis. It begins to take off however as Gandolfini begins a series of dramatic changes to his life, starting with taking Stewart under his wing.
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A flat reincarnation of life-after-death films you've seen before.
While I liked the three main characters in Clint Eastwood’s HEREAFTER, I never became attached enough to them or their stories to keep from lapsing into spells of boredom. Most of the film splits into three separate stories, which means each character disappears from the screen for ten to twenty minutes at a stretch. Perhaps if we got to see the three protagonists more consistently, it would have been easier to connect with them.
Matt Damon is a fine actor and it wouldn’t surprise me if he one day walks away with a well-deserved acting Oscar. That said, he's so good-looking -- even with extra pounds and a dash of gray in this role -- it was hard for me to accept him as a lonely, isolated soul. (No matter how big his character’s burden.) Also, he exhibits a form of ESP, a trait we’ve seen too many times now on the screen. The scenes in which Damon’s George communicates with the deceased are just cheesy. I also got the impression I was supposed to be bowled over with emotion by his final spiritual reading in the film -- instead it came across as silly.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What unites the central character in each of the three tales -- George, Marcus and Marie -- is their interest in heaven, or the hereafter. Damon plays George Lonegan, a San Francisco native who reluctantly communicates with the departed by holding the hands of their loved ones. Marie (Cécile De France), who lives in Paris, is forever changed by a near-death experience while vacationing abroad. And London schoolboy Marcus (played by both Frankie and George McLaren)mourns the recent loss of his twin brother, killed in a car accident. (Tragedy follows so closely upon tragedy at the beginning of the film that it's difficult to shake one's paranoia that yet more doom is in store for these folks.) Marie and Marcus’s experiences force them to delve into research on life after death. Both their quests ultimately lead them to George, who is bitter, frustrated and lonely over his "cursed" ability to transcend the physical world.
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Not horrible, with a few good laughs.
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT is not horrible, despite the modern romantic comedy genre’s poor, abused track record. The preview screening I attended was full of girls and gays - the latter surely attending in part to glimpse hunky Josh Duhamel in tighty-whiteys, as seen in the poster. (Hey, it caught this gay's attention.) Anyway, as I gritted my teeth through this groaningly obvious and ridiculous plot, I can at least say I did smile sometimes. And the audience I was with ate it up.
We first meet Holly (Heigl) and Eric (Duhamel) on a blind date set up by their mutual best friends Alison and Peter (Christina Hendricks and Hayes MacArthur), who are married to each other. So inconsiderate is Eric to Holly that after showing up an hour late, sans apology, he proceeds to make a booty call from the passenger seat of her car before they've even left for dinner. She tells him off, and that's that. Except it’s not. Since their best friends are a couple, Holly and Eric endure each other’s company again and again, and their hatred for one another only deepens with time. The silliness kicks in after their BFF’s die in a car crash: Holly and Eric are designated in the will as baby Sophie’s joint caretakers -- and (romantic) chaos ensues.
Question: Are our hearts really supposed to bleed for the grieving Holly and Eric when we don't know anything of substance about these characters this early in the movie? If the director had chosen to show literal cardboard cut outs of their friends crumpled in a smashed car -- two-dimensional test dummies -- I would respond with equal indifference. Alison and Peter are cardboard: pretty, bland people with no defining personality traits whatsoever. (Though we do see Peter harass a teen for being high, then confiscate the poor guy’s pot for his own use. Um, dick?)
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