Be Good

Having a baby can be fun!

(2012) Dramedy (Obrigado) Thomas J. Madden, Amy Seimetz, Tessa Day Looby, Todd Looby, Billy Phelan, Quentin Hirsley, Jim Jacob, Kathryn Henderson, Paul Gordon, Joe Swanberg, David Leonard, J.D. Won. Directed by Todd Looby

 

Parenthood has become a very different proposition in 2013. The economic realities of having a baby in the 21st century are sobering for anyone, let alone a young family that isn’t pulling in big bucks.

Mary (Seimetz) is getting ready for her first day back at work for a charitable foundation benefitting Guatemalan children after having been out six months on maternity leave. Her husband Paul (Madden), an independent filmmaker who has had much more critical praise than financial success, is staying home watching baby Pearl (director Looby’s real-life daughter Tessa) while he writes his latest screenplay on a Mexican anti-drug crusader known as El Flaco. He figures he’ll do this while Pearl is taking her naps.

Unfortunately Pearl isn’t inclined to co-operate as baby’s are wont to do so Paul slowly begins to lose focus. She isn’t sleeping much at night either so Paul exiles himself to the couch to catch what rest he can. In the meantime, Mary is growing more and more frustrated with Paul’s inability to make money and her own exile at work. She wants very much to spend more time bonding with her baby – an imperative most moms can relate to I’m sure. Something’s got to give.

Looby is developing a reputation on the film festival circuit as a promising young storyteller and this is the kind of film that can enhance a reputation like that. This isn’t some Hollywood idealized look at how babies transform the life of a young couple – they do of course but not always in positive ways. Like anything else, parenting is an imperfect pursuit because people are imperfect. Those first couple of years of having a baby is exhausting; it’s a wonder any of us survive it. Exhausted people have a tendency to take out their frustrations in unhealthy ways.

Paul and Mary are basically good people who are in a situation where Mary is forced to be the provider, a situation not as unusual as it once was. The benefits she gets through her job are the only thing making it possible to have Pearl. The medical expenses of pregnancy, delivery and post-natal care alone are staggering without insurance. The toll taking care of a small creature who is completely dependent on you is significant as well; it wears one down.

This isn’t a depressing movie by any means – there’s a lot of love here. Looby based the film on his own experiences and in fact wrote and directed the movie while being a house husband, his wife working in much the same manner Mary does here (there’s an amusing scene where Mary finds a quiet store room to do her breast pumping and a co-worker walks in on her – one wonders how much biography is going on as opposed to fiction). I think he accurately captures the frustrations of new parents but also the rewards of newly parenting.

This isn’t going to rewrite the book on movies about new parents but by the same token it will leave you feeling fondly towards the characters and the situation. While new parents might well use it as a partial primer as to what to expect (and understand that every baby is different as is pointed out poignantly during a scene in which real life director Swanberg, playing himself, runs into Paul outside of a doctor’s office) this may well prove more useful as a movie about the changing roles of men and women in relationships. Either way, kudos to the filmmaker for keeping it real – something that is much harder to do than you might think.

REASONS TO GO: Realistic look at the obstacles facing new parents.

REASONS TO STAY: Not necessarily inspirational nor instructional. Perhaps a bit too indie-centric.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s a bit of language and some sexuality but not a lot.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film’s assertion that Joe directed eight movies in the six months since his baby was born is a bit of a dig at the real Joe Swanberg’s prolific output of 14 movies before he turned 30.

CRITICAL MASS: There have been no reviews published for the film for either Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: A Beautiful Belly

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Starbuck and more coverage of the 2013 Florida Film Festival!

Advertisement

The Change-Up

Jason Bateman knows that no matter how much Ryan Reynolds pleas he's not getting Leslie Mann's teddy bears.

(2011) Comedy Fantasy (Universal) Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin, Mircea Monroe, Gregory Itzin, Ned Schmidtke, Lo Ming, Sydney Rouviere, Andrea Moore, Craig Bierko, Taafe O’Connell, Ed Ackerman. Directed by David Dobkin

It is said that the grass is always greener on the other side and as with most clichés, there is a good deal of truth to it. It is human nature to want that which we don’t have. However, most times when we finally get to the other side we come to the understanding that the greener hue was just a trick of the light.

Dave (Bateman) is a family man with three children, two of them infants. He’s married to Jamie (Mann) who is beautiful and loving. He’s also a hard-working corporate lawyer who’s about to shepherd a merger that will virtually guarantee him the partnership he’s been working towards for a decade. However, Dave is working so hard juggling family and firm that his family focus has begun to suffer and Jamie is beginning to question how present he is in the relationship as husband and father (he has the breadwinner thing down cold).

Mitch (Reynolds) is Dave’s best friend, a ladies’ man and perpetually unemployed actor who spends most of his day getting stoned, playing video games and having every kind of sex with a wide variety of beautiful women. The two hang out at a local bar one night, watching a baseball game and talking about their lives. As the shots flow and the evening wears on, each professes admiration for the lifestyle of the other. As they stumble from the bar well past last call, nature calls and the two find a fountain in a public park nearby. As they urinate into the fountain, they both manage to say simultaneously “I wish I had your life.” The lights go out dramatically and the two go home to sleep it off.

Except when they wake up they are in each others’ bodies. Mitch suddenly has to cope with changing babies, attending meetings, seeing things through and the kind of intimacy in a relationship that goes beyond sex. Dave has to cope with kinky sex, loneliness and learning how to relax. However without meaning to, each one is screwing up the other’s lives. They must become the men that the other one is in order to get back to their own lives.

This may be a first for body switch movies – transference via urination. Certainly I for one am going to be much more selective into which troughs I pee into and with whom from here on out. However, pee isn’t the only bodily fluid you’ll be encountering here; in the first five minutes Dave gets a face full (and mouthful) of baby poop. That kind of sets the tone.

At least it does for the first half of the movie. From going Judd Apatow-raunchy in the first half, the second half is all Frank Capra-sentimental as the men learn the value of appreciating what they have. That almost sounds like a studio shying away from a complete raunchfest which is kind of bizarre because in addition to the scatological you’ll find sex with an EXTREMELY pregnant woman as well as with a decidedly mature woman, not to mention masturbation and extra scrotums. It’s a virtual smorgasbord of carnal delight.

Bateman is scaling comedy heights that will soon have him rubbing elbows with Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey. Here he shows off that he can be much more versatile in his range, playing both the irresponsible horndog as well as the conservative family man. Reynolds seems to be more involved doing action movies lately but it’s easy to forget he’s done some pretty solid comedic roles as well (Definitely Maybe, Waiting…) and is quite good at them. Bateman and Reynolds have some good chemistry together and in fact the whole ensemble fit together nicely as a whole.

Mann has some genuinely affecting moments as Dave’s long-suffering wife who isn’t quite sure if she and her children have the place in Dave’s heart that they used to. The always reliable Alan Arkin has a few scenes as Mitch’s estranged dad and Olivia Wilde looks gorgeous as a law clerk with a thing for Dave…err, Mitch…err, Dave. It’s hard to get straight.

Body switching movies are as old as the hills and have been done in as many different ways as you can think of. This one purported to be a raunchy sexy version of the genre but only really sticks to it for the first half of the movie before being roped into the schmaltz that Hollywood seems to demand of its comedies. Not every great comedy has to come with a heart-warming ending, after all.

I wish The Change-Up had the courage of its convictions and had stuck to the raunchiness throughout. That seemed to be where the movie was in its comfort zone. I had hoped with the leads that the movie had it could have ended up a lot better of a movie. It’s still not that bad but it is a bit disappointing given my expectations for it.

REASONS TO GO: Reynolds and Bateman are extremely appealing leads.

REASONS TO STAY: Movie veers wildly from crude to cuddly. Humor is hit or miss, usually the latter. Been there done that factor is high.

FAMILY VALUES: There is quite a bit more nudity here than is usual for most Hollywood films of the 21st century; also there’s a good deal of salty language, drug use and innuendo.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The bar scenes were filmed at an Atlanta watering hole called Joe’s on Juniper.

HOME OR THEATER: This is definitely one you can save for your Netflix queue.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Another Earth