Better Living Through Chemistry (2014) By the time this indie comedy lurched to its end, we realized that all of its creativity, humor and energy were entirely expanded on its main titles.....a meticulous miniature scale model of the film's bucolic, suburban neighborhood, complete with residents in various states of stupor and sex.
The film that follows those titles is a mostly tired, witless stab at duplicating the kind of trademark quirk that put the Coen brothers on the map.
And that's a shame, cause the cast assembled for this was certainly game.......except the film gives them nothing to work with. Everybody's talents end up wasted here. (Particularly in the brief appearance of the potentially incendiary Ray Liotta, whose presence amounts to nothing)
That unpredictable live wire Sam Rockwell plays a small town pharmacist who seems created as a kinder, gentler version of William H. Macy's hapless car salesman in 'Fargo'.
He's belittled by his powerhouse of a wife (Michele Monaghan),befuddled by his unhappy rebellious 12 year old son(Harrison Holzer) and intimidated and bullied by his gruff father-in-law (Ken Howard), whose pharmacy he now runs and owns, though he lacks the balls to defy the old man and give the place his own last name..
All this changes when Rockwell meets up with the neighborhood's resident Hot-To-Trot-Femme-Fatale-Trophy-Wife (Olivia Wilde). Gasping, Olympic-worthy sex quickly follows, along with Rockwell and Wilde also freely sampling all the pharmaceutical goodies available in Rockwell's inventory.
None of this, we should point out, comes out anywhere near as dryly comedic and ironic as the filmmakers intended, even with the additional meta joke of having the film narrated by Jane Fonda, playing.....wait for it.....movie star Jane Fonda, who happens to live in the town part time.......
In true the,"is that all there is?" style of indies, the film serves up two reversal-of-fortune twists for Rockwell and then settles for a comfortably conventional moral lesson.
And left us pondering why we wasted 92 minutes of our life watching this. Oh....now we remember.......we did it so no BQ visitor will ever suffer through it like we did. Zero stars (0).
No comments:
Post a Comment