It deserves whatever terrible things might be said about its makers
The real fun
of reviewing movies is writing about one that that aims high and succeeds.
Aiming high but failing is still commendable. Niche films (most frat boy and
chick flicks) are merely boring. But when a movie is so utterly lazy that it
becomes an intolerable insult to the audience, it deserves whatever terrible
things might be said about its makers. Such a one is Peep World.
Henry
Meyerwitz (Ron Rifkin) is a Manhattan developer who has ten adult children, an
ex-wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and lots of money. He has never liked or enjoyed
any of his adult children who he sees as losers. Only business success might
have won Henry's affection, and don't bother looking for that in this brood.
Jack (Michael
C. Hall) is a pedestrian architect about to lose his firm. He sneaks off to an
interactive sex shop leaving his pregnant wife Laura (Judy Greer) home alone.
Joel (Rainn Wilson) is the perennial trouble maker who drives around in a
battered Escalade trying to patch up the messes he has created. Nathan, the
youngest, has written a wildly successful novel entitled Peep World that skewers
his family. With movie rights optioned, Nathan is the one obvious success in the
second generation. Cheri (Sarah Silverman), a daughter among boys, is spoiled,
selfish, arrogant and bitter that Nathan has portrayed her true ugliness in his
book.
Tonight this
group of disaffected family will gather to celebrate Henry's 70th birthday. For
the balance of the film, we watch the misfits fire verbal bullets at each other
- the kind that shatter into lethal pieces on impact. We learn about Henry, the
absent, uncaring father. Leslie Ann Warren creates the one decent character as
the ex-wife navigating her crowd of lonely maladjusted children; but whenever a
real performance begins to pop up, it is extinguished in seconds, leaving the
actor hanging with nothing to say and nowhere to go.
The movie seems to fancy itself as stand-up or sitcom, but the jokes are dull
and flat. Get ready for a Heimlich maneuver for a choking victim who deserves to
die, a medically induced erection that might be mercifully terminal, and a
pathetic performance by Sarah Silverman about whom nothing can be said beyond
the truth that she is a terrible actor.
A heap of
blame is due, and most of it goes to writer Peter Himmelstein who has written a
script that strands his actors in unresolved snippets. And don't spare director
Barry Blaustein. Either of these men should have been a restraining influence on
the other. Instead, dialogue and direction equal zero.
After an
introductory voice announced, "A brutally honest and dysfunctional family on the
brink of implosion….," we settled in to enjoy the problems of a family not our
own. But hear this: no matter how terrible your dysfunctional family is, this
movie will make you understand on a deep level that it could be a lot worse.
Copyright (c) Illusion