Holiday Schmaltz: LOVE THE COOPERS

The opening scene of Love the Coopers finds the Cooper family matriarch signing the last of her Christmas cards. “Love, The Coopers,” she writes with a flourish. The title of the movie, however, lacks the comma, making it less a warm present to us all, and more a demand to love the family we’ll be spending the next two hours with. This directive would go over easier if we were given sharply drawn characters who come into focus quickly. But we don’t. It’s a sprawling holiday dramedy dripping with sap and spreading its large ensemble amongst several connected plotlines, some far more interesting than others. It’s a sloppy Christmassy mess, but because a cast of likable charmers plays the characters, the movie has its moments anyway.

Opening on the morning of Christmas Eve, the screenplay by Steven Rogers (Stepmom) finds a large extended family all over Pittsburgh in a rush to get last minute holiday shopping and planning out of the way before the night’s big family dinner. It’s a belabored, scattered setup, hoping to gain some interest out of mystery, keeping the family connections murky until they crystallize as the people congregate around the cookbook-photo-spread Christmas supper. Overly expository narration (by Steve Martin, oddly drained of humor, and oozing storybook affect) tells us a lot, but illuminates little as we find a variety of small human dramas played broad. There’s a layer of schmaltz slathered all over an awkward mix of bad sitcom pacing and drooling manipulation.

There’s a divorced dad (Ed Helms) trying to hide his job loss from his ex-wife (Alex Borstein). Their painfully uncomfortable teen son (Timothée Chalamet) wants his first kiss, their youngest son (Maxwell Simkins) wants a bike, and their toddler daughter (Blake Baumgartner) has learned a curse word. There’s a kind old man (Alan Arkin) with a platonic crush on a sweet waitress (Amanda Seyfried). There’s a couple in their sixties (Diane Keaton and John Goodman) happy to host a family holiday for one last time, since they plan to use it to announce their impending divorce. There’s a lonely middle-aged woman (Marisa Tomei) who’s caught shoplifting (by cop Anthony Mackie) and so might be late for dinner. Finally, there’s a cynical liberal playwright (Olivia Wilde) who Meets Cute with a conservative soldier (Jake Lacy) in an airport bar. Between these stories are stock-footage-ready shots of snowy streets, Santas, and more carolers around every corner than I’ve ever seen in real life.

That’s quite a lot of plot to juggle, especially when it’s not all that deftly edited, and written with thin tin-eared stereotypes. (I didn’t even mention the elderly aunt (June Squibb) whose dementia is used exclusively for laughs.) It develops convolutedly, layered with flashing flashbacks to many characters’ pasts. You might think that’d bring extra heft to the emotional stakes, but it often confuses the issue, mistaking whats for whys when it comes to fleshing out the characters. Director Jessie Nelson (with her first directing credit since 2001’s I Am Sam) cross-cuts unevenly, allowing one character’s cross-town car trip to take as long as another’s grocery shopping, caroling, sledding, and cooking combined. This all could’ve benefited from a smoother approach to ensemble storytelling, more Altman-esque, or at least on the level of a Love Actually or The Best Man Holiday.

The movie spends its time lurching from storyline to storyline, haphazardly developed, largely unconvincing, tonally confused, both too calculated and weirdly adrift. And yet, as frazzled as this setup is, some of it works, and the predictable payoffs are rather sweet in their own ways. The talented cast is too good, especially when Nelson allows them real sensitive moments of connection, to let a sloppy script drag them down. When Keaton and Goodman argue, and when they wistfully reminisce about the good times and the bad they’ve shared over forty years of marriage, there’s real emotional weight. And in the airport scenes between Wilde and Lacy there develops a low-key romantic comedy that’s rather lovely in its chemistry and prickly warmth.

There’s almost enough gooey goodness in the moments that work to override the bad, like the final moments, which reveal the narrator is not omniscient, as has seemed to be the case, but instead a character we meet who has no possible way of knowing everything he’s been telling us. So it’s not a particularly good movie overall. It’s clumsy, obvious, full of clunky failed comedy and overtly telegraphed messages. (Could you guess it’ll be about valuing family togetherness and appreciating what you have right in front of you?) But it also has enough earnest sentiment to make it moderately effective on any big softies in the audience. I have to admit, from time to time, I was one of them. There’s no compelling reason to recommend Love the Coopers except the fleeting moments of button-pushing emotion, which might be enough if you’re willing to let yourself give in and be an easy target for that sort of thing. 

Shake Your Boov Thing: HOME

Home is the sweetest, sunniest alien invasion movie you’ll ever see. It starts when the Boov come to Earth looking for refuge, having fled across the galaxy pursued by the Gorg. Following the Boov motto, “Run away,” they just need a place to hide their little purple squishy square bodies, a respite for their mood-ring skin, rest after so much scurrying around on floppy tentacles. They’re cute, awkward, and pushy, relocating all the humans to a pop-up internment village in Australia. They stretch out across the rest of the globe, content to stay hidden forever from the Gorg – a planet-busting warrior starfish in a big mechanical triangle. That doesn’t sound so sweet or sunny, but the Boov mean well, and they don’t do anything that can’t be undone.

The story concerns a human girl, Tip (Rihanna), who has been stranded in New York, separated from her loving, worried mother (Jennifer Lopez). Hiding from the Boov, Tip stumbles across Oh (Jim Parsons), a loveable oddball alien who just made a big mistake that’ll lead the Gorg right to Earth and is thus on the run from his fellow people. They’re both outsiders. She’s an immigrant from Barbados. He’s disliked by every Boov. “I don’t fit in. I fit out,” he sadly reports in his Boov-ian broken English. And so they reluctantly realize they can help each other, and maybe even set the topsy-turvy world right side up again. What follows is a chipper and pleasant sci-fi road trip about cross-species understanding.

Now in its second decade, DreamWorks Animation has moved away from gimmicky pop culture comedies and become a reliable source of charming animated adventures. Home, directed by Tim Johnson (Over the Hedge) from a screenplay by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember (Epic) based on a kid’s book by Adam Rex, hits all the expected beats of such a project. It’s a cute adventure that’s a standard family film message machine. Be yourself. Be kind. Do the right thing. But it manages to be energetic and enjoyable without stooping to snark or collateral damage. It comes by its entertainment earnestly.

Especially lovable is its design, a soft world of round edges and a vibrant color palate. It looks comfortable, from floating futuristic orbs manipulating gravity to a fuzzy cat who spends most of the movie purring. The alien invasion conceit is both a fine hook treated with some degree of seriousness, and also a great joke. The Boov are never threatening, with a bumbling leader voiced by Steve Martin leading them towards misunderstandings of Earth ways. He rides a vacuum – at one point motoring into a meeting yelling, “I vacuumed here as fast as I could!” – wears oranges as shoes, and eats footballs like fruit. With this culture clash, they come from a believably goofy place, with bubble-hovercraft and PlaySkool-adjacent gadgets delightfully rendered in cutesy alien styles.

Even better is the film’s matter-of-factly diverse cast of human characters. It’s easy to imagine a weaker movie falling into Hollywood reluctance, defaulting the story to a typical white father-son journey. It didn’t have to be about women of color. And yet it is about a girl from a particular background with all the specificity she brings, a welcome sight. What a powerful statement, saying animated adventures can be about anyone, a message all the more powerful for its off-hand acceptance. It simply is part of the fabric of a story about finding value in everyone, no matter how different you might think they are at first glance.

At its heart is the odd couple of Tip and Oh, loveable, expressive, heartfelt characters. That the girl and the alien become good buddies is no surprise. The film’s not exactly breaking new narrative ground. But it’s a movie of warm, kindhearted vibes, with likable visual humor and cozy voice performances. Rihanna and J.Lo are a convincing, connected mother-daughter pair. Parsons has an open silly wonderment to his blundering alien voice. And Martin’s antagonist is a perfect blatantly ridiculous hot-air machine ready to be punctured. The story is gentle, never mean-spirited. It’s an appealing, good-looking, well-intentioned entertainment that’s full of cheerful imagination and all the right messages handled with a light touch.

IT'S (a little) COMPLICATED

She’s been divorced for ten years but now, on the eve of her youngest child’s college graduation, this intensely successful baker has started an affair with her ex-husband, even though she might be about to find romance with the architect who’s designing her new kitchen. See, that wasn’t so complicated, and yet Nancy Meyers, or some studio executive, has named the movie It’s Complicated anyways. The title is a clue to the true intentions of the movie, though, which is in the spirit of screwball comedies and door-slamming farces where the plot is only as complicated as the characters choose to make it, as they go so far out of their way to hide what they know, or think they know, that they run the risk of running right back into the truth. That spirit is very much present in the movie but Meyers hasn’t a good enough script to stand proudly among the traditions she intends to uphold. To these ears, the movie is probably pretty flat on the page. What saves the movie, making it a very pleasurable and enjoyable experience, is the sheer luminosity of the stars involved.

The baker is Meryl Streep, genuinely radiant here, bouncing delightfully off of the ex-husband played by a pitch-perfect Alec Baldwin. Together, they take the drabbest scenes and spruce them up through line readings and twinkling eyes into something approaching believable. They sparkle and crackle their way through the plot with cheery good-nature and glistening precision. They’re impossible to hate. Steve Martin as well, as the architect, turns what could have been a one-note milktoast role into a small work of much charm. Continuing the trend of elevating the material is John Krasinski, as Streep and Baldwin’s soon-to-be-son-in-law, getting some of the biggest laughs with his charm and delivery, rivaling all on screen for sheer likability. The movie’s at its best when it winds up the characters and lets the personalities bounce off each other in believably entertaining ways. The funniest moment involves an unexpected combination of characters getting stoned at a graduation party, which also makes it the funniest on-screen drug trip of the year.

It’s too bad Meyers doesn’t do her cast any favors by shooting the film as blandly slick as possible and stranding them in palatial settings of barely believable wealth and prosperity. She even mucks around with the plotting until the long sizzling of the plot comes to an unsatisfying rushed ending that seems to cut corners and denies the opportunity for the truly marvelous payoff that feels owed. The way the whole situation is finally unveiled to all of the characters is too neat and tidy, and the choice Streep makes ultimately feels too hurried. But even all that doesn’t take the shine off of the good times. It’s a very slight, completely inconsequential movie, but it becomes an enjoyable one through the seemingly effortless work of its stars.