The Meyerowitz Stories | Noah Baumbach | NYFF 2017
Noah Baumbach’s latest, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), captures the family dysfunction and love that sometimes can be one and the same so well. Taking a page out of Woody Allen and even Wes Anderson, and of course with all the New York charm that Baumbach has shown us time and time again, this film captures the high art scene of New York with a feeling of authenticity that made it a pitch-perfect fit for screening at the New York Film Festival.
Beginning with an all-too-classic scene of Danny Meyerowitz (Adam Sandler) trying to find street parking on the streets of New York with his daughter Eliza (Grace Van Patten). The scene captures the frustration and intensity of what should be a simple task so damn well while also establishing that this isn’t the Adam Sandler that you’ve learned to hate for a good part of this past decade. Sure, there are elements of that familiar unchecked rage but Baumbach harnesses his energy for good reason. You see, Danny is unemployed and forced to move back home with his father Harold (Dustin Hoffman) and his third wife Maureen (Emma Thompson). It’s tough to be around Harold these days as he’s a retired art professor and sculptor who is having trouble coming to terms with the fading relevancy of his legacy in the art world, ironically just before an event celebrating his work is to take place.
This event brings back Matthew (Ben Stiller) and Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) who soon find themselves coming to terms with unfinished family business of the past, presents, and future that is set to tear them apart but may actually bring them together if they can find a way to come together and put aside their differences.
Baumbach, who directs a script that he wrote himself, has his fingerprints all over this picture and has assembled a quirky cast of characters that results in a most memorable family built on dysfunction and unusual tough love. As painstakingly funny in a dry manner that Baumbach has made his bread and butter there’s also plenty of drama and heart to go around and find a nice balance to the absurd laughs that a cast starring Sandler, Stiller, and Hoffman is due to bring out.
Credit to the director for bringing out the sort of performance from Sandler that we haven’t seen since he worked with Paul Thomas Anderson on Punch-Drunk Love. Sandler brings the dramatic heft that we all know he is capable of when he wants to actually act and it’s so damn good to see him surrounded by top-class actors who bring out the best of Sandler, along with Baumbach’s finely tuned material. He and Stiller work well as brothers who have unfinished business and seeing them buttheads in a serious yet absurd fashion is the sort of cinematic moment I didn’t know I needed, but I did. There’s also some nice understated work from Dustin Hoffman, Elizabeth Marvel, and Emma Thompson.
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is a rich and passionate joyous occasion that works because of these richly drawn characters that Baumbach let roam freely and bring out a lot of the sort of familial-based chaos that is ultimately far too relatable than any of us would like to admit. It’s a smartly fine-tuned piece of filmmaking that captures the frantic fractured love-hate relationship of a family in such a natural manner that all of us can connect to whether we like it or not.
Rating: 8.4/10
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