2014 Movies: #30

#30 This is Where I Leave You

I know that I just found myself complaining about Seth Rogen's lack of dimensionality, and the same could certainly be said about Jason Bateman. Since he re-stepped onto the scene as Michael Bluth back in the early aughts, he has made a name for himself as "go-to guy for shat-on family/career guy with acerbic wit and expressionless delivery of dialogue." Much like Rogen, you know what you are going to get out of him, and you know how his dynamic will play out in a group setting. Most of the time, it still works for me.

The patriarch of the Altman family has just died, and the four Altman siblings have to return home to sit shiva at their suburban manse. (For those of you who are not familiar, sitting shiva is the seven-day mourning period in the Jewish faith in which people come to the family's home to pay respects. Shiva is not always an entire week; for example, when my bubby passed a little over a year ago, there was one main gathering at the house following the service that spanned a day or two.) They are: Judd (Bateman), working guy husband who has just walked in on his wife screwing his boss (Dax Shepherd); Wendy (Tina Fey), a recent mom who's ass-hat of a cliche'd husband is always on his blackberry and leaving on business; Paul (House of Cards' Corey Stoll), married to and trying to conceive with Annie (Kathryn Hahn) while living in their hometown and now running his father's sporting goods store; and Phillip (the suddenly ubiquitous Adam Driver), a rebellious free spirit, who swears to everyone that he is finally getting his act together. Meanwhile, mom Altman (Jane Fonda) has recently gotten a boob job to reinvent herself.

Similar to The Judge, the Altman clan is quickly dragged into their past by their return home. Judd bumps into Penny (Rose Byrne), a young woman he used to crush on back in high school and begins a dalliance. Wendy reconnects with Hari (Justified's Timothy Olyphant), her old boyfriend who suffered a serious brain injury in a car accident and still lives across the street from the house and still works at the sporting goods store. Despite bringing home a much older, serious therapist girlfriend (Connie Britton), Phillip ends up tempted by the fruits of another. Finally, there is palpable tension, as there was in the past, between Paul and Judd, exacerbated by the fact that Annie and Judd dated first. Family secrets are let out in intermittent fashions and allegiances are made and broken, made and broken. The actors play drama well but start to devolve into their signature characters--the quips of Michael Bluth, the uncomfortable schtick of Liz Lemon, the offbeat charm of Girl's Adam Sackler. Despite the obvious formulas, the performances lifted it to what I considered to be a pretty enjoyable flick.