Movie Review: Greenberg
Greenberg, Noah Baumbachs new semi-comedy about a 40-ish former musician in a rut who meets a sweet girl on a trip to his successful brothers house in California, is more of a twist on Philip Roth – as its title indicates – than an update of a Woody Allen situation, as might be expected from the hints of a nebbish comedy with a cast led by Ben Stiller.
Greenberg
The highest praise for this film is that there are many hints of truth in it, as two characters adrift in their lives meet each other, and swim together in their own neurotic swamp until one of them decides its too much. But like so many situations that – for better or worse – are part of life, and must be watched by someone, this does not necessarily merit spending two hours and the price of a movie ticket. (If that sounds like a warning from Roger Ebert, it isnt. Ebert liked the film, and declared that Greenberg is the role that Ben Stiller was born to play.)
Ben Stiller in "Greenberg"
As someone who likes Stiller as an actor and director, I disagree. Give me Tropic Thunder or Zoolander.
Greenberg fuses many stories, although recycle might be a better verb. One of them is the you-can-never-go-home-again tale of a narcissistic aging guy who seems to have failed at most things, who journeys from New York to his brothers LA house and swimming pool. Here the guy whos done some time in a mental institution meets another lost soul, the younger Florence, and it becomes David-and-Lisa-lite, the story of the brief relationship of two misfits who even fail at what the pop psych crowd calls co-dependency. There are plenty of atmospheric critiques of Los Angeles here – the mindlessness of 40-somethings who repeat things that you read in the newspaper, the pool banter with parasitic neighbors, the emptiness of daily life in your car. Youve heard it all before, but Greenberg manages to make it more boring and annoying than most earlier efforts.
You get the feeling that Greenberg would have been better as part of a half-hour episode on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Theyll have to come up with another name.
Yet Baumbach has hit on something. In concentrating on Stiller as a discouraged loser and on Florence (Greta Gerwig) (above) as a 20-something who still hasnt found her way, the idea of extended adolescence as a lifelong purgatory seems like a great idea for a movie. Isnt that what Seinfeld was all about?
Take a detour through Philip Roth to get inside characters whose journeys through memories and doubt are ones that literature tends to achieve better than cinema. Maybe thats why the films adapted from Roths books never fulfill their promises. That said, theres probably another one in the works.
But see Greenberg for Greta Gerwig, a new emerging stalwart of independent films – although this films budget may have raised her status. Her radiant face can be wonderfully dramatic in close-ups. In Baghead, which delivers everything that the Greenberg film doesnt, we also saw that shes a vulnerable and appealing comedienne.