The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

[StevePulaski]

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
Directed by: Noah Baumbach

Adam Sandler (left) and Ben Stiller (right) in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).

Rating: ★★★½

There's a scene towards the end of The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) that shows Adam Sandler in a hospital bed following surgery, lamenting the fact that his father never did one big thing to anger him. There was no moment of him stealing a great deal of money nor reneging on a promise he vowed to keep. In fact, his father was a man defined by a series of annoyances on top of countless tiny things he did to anger those closest to him, and that is the kind of person that is the hardest to live with and the most difficult to forgive.

Noah Baumbach's latest plays like his previous works, The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding, for at its core, it's about a very somber event that affects an entire family. Simultaneously, however, it adheres to the broader comedy of his most recent film, While We're Young. Baumbach has been the epitome of humanist filmmaking, starting in the 1990s long before "mumblecore" was even conceptualized by the most optimistic auteur or even attempted by artless schmucks such as myself.

Divided up like a novel, with scenes cutting off sometimes at the immediate end of a sentence the instant we get the point, the dramedy revolves around the three adult offspring of Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman), a New York-based artist with an inflated ego and an uncanny ability to alienate. The first sibling we meet is Danny (Adam Sandler), a struggling musician/single-parent with a college-age daughter Eliza (Grace Van Patten) and a bad hip. As he rests comfortably in middle-age, Eliza, who is about to leave for school to be a filmmaker, has become his closest friend in times of great distress. The second sibling we meet is Matthew (Ben Stiller), a successful business manager who feels like he's competed for the attention of his father for his entire life. Finally, there's Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), the least noisy of all the Meyerowitz kids, who harbors an uncomfortable past by carrying around a deeply disconnected vibe. Mostly, she watches her dopey brothers in passivity.

These uneven relationships become tested in a new way once Harold falls gravely ill with a grim outlook. While he's confined to a hospital bed with feeding tube meals and death becoming more imminent by the hour, the three siblings are left to confront their childhoods and the present state of their relationships with their father. For one, Danny laments about how frequently he must hear of Matthew's successes when Matthew, on the other-hand, feels all he ever gets are back-handed remarks with snide undertones regarding his advancement in the corporate world. These moments show how difficult it is to love, let alone connect with, someone who is not only invested in themselves, but so keen on praising someone in their immediate family when they're not around to hear it. The praised party goes around hearing from strangers how loved they are while questioning why it was so tough for the person they love to express those feelings to them in the first place.

Something this personalized and heartbreaking is difficult to portray without being overtly obvious or mawkish but Baumbach finds the success he normally does. His talent is crafting a story that's softly interwoven into the lives of very well-written, textured characters in a way that makes the plot happen as a result of their actions. Half the time, there isn't much of a plot, but the presence of developed characters that do their part in getting you to believe them as people, and maybe even relate.

Populating The Meyerowitz Stories are a series of strong performances. Starting with the obvious, Adam Sandler gives his truest, most believable performance since Reign Over Me a decade ago (even those removed from big praise will at least admit it's better than the last three Sandler/Netflix efforts we had to sit through). As I've said before, it's a remarkable thing to witness just how good the 51-year-old comedian is when he's unable to rely on his usual schtick and is given a character with which to work. The end result is a role that makes everyone around him better, and that includes newcomer Greta Van Patten, who steals several scenes, including one where her and Sandler collaborate over a beautiful song on the piano, as well as Ben Stiller.

Even Stiller, the actor we love to bash for playing the same character - a similar reason we condemn Sandler, is very good here, fully aware of his character's unlikable nature. Stiller's best moments come when he inspires dynamic energy with Hoffman over dinner, which ends with an awkward confrontation capped off with a misunderstanding, or in a hospital quad with Sandler as their father's condition worsens. Quite possibly the only conversation Stiller has with any character in the film that doesn't carry any kind of weight to it is the first one we see with him, which involves conversing with a buffoonish Adam Driver about his dream-loft. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Marvel is at her most effective in a role that involves great body language, while Hoffman's lack of self-awareness presents a funny contrast to Stiller's character, and given what we already know about Stiller as an actor.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) earns the parenthetical of its title because it plays like a witty series of novellas set in the intellectual, Jewish-American bubble of New York. It's populated by tender or wryly funny scenes, such as Danny and Matthew's pathetic, hyper-masculine attempt to get back at an elderly man who did a disgusting thing to Jean so many years ago, all while allowing audiences to remain observant of the characters' behavior.

There was a time when not too long ago when comedy-dramas like this were oddities seen in select theaters in Los Angeles and New York before humbly arriving on DVD where few would see them. Now, something like The Meyerowitz Stories reside on Netflix just a few clicks away and is as good as anything presently playing at a cinema near you. Brace yourself; it's a bold new frontier.

Starring: Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Elizabeth Marvel, Dustin Hoffman, Grace Van Patten, Emma Thompson, Judd Hirsch, and Adam Driver. Directed by: Noah Baumbach.