[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]
Connection to The Extra Man: Both star Celia Weston
Premise: A man tries to get back into the dating scene after his wife abruptly leaves him.
I’m starting to think people don’t know what a dramedy is supposed to be. They treat it like a lazy word when it’s actually a disciplined word. Yes, a dramedy is a movie that is part comedy and part drama. That gets wildly misinterpreted though. Some use it for a drama that happens to feature a lot of comedic actors. Others use it for any movie with a sad part and a funny part. Most commonly, it’s used for any movie someone doesn’t want to define. However, a proper dramedy is really supposed to use both the drama and comedy intentionally. It should be funny. The humor shouldn’t step on the drama though. Perhaps it’s an intentional release for the dramatic moment. Or maybe the dramatic moments ground the comedy. This is why a lot of black comedies work as dramedies. The jokes cope with the hard truths in the film.
Goodbye to All That is a drama, albeit one with low stakes and a few mildly comedic moments. I can see why it’s called a dramedy. Paul Schneider was fresh off Parks & Rec. Melanie Lynskey, Anna Camp, and Heather Graham work in a variety of genres, but if I was ever told they were in a movie, ‘comedy’ would be my first guess. Michael Chernus and Amy Sedaris are comedy people. The movie has enough slapstick to stick in a trailer. But, really, it’s about a guy forced into a mid-life crisis after his wife left him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. He’s struggling with custody for his kid. There’s even a random side-plot about how if he keeps running, he could lose his foot.
The problem is, I don’t really know what the movie is trying to do. The comedy is rather forcefully stuck in, like there was a mandate to include it. The divorce stuff felt a lot like a screenwriter working through his own feelings about a divorce. Melanie Lynskey essentially just wants out of the marriage because Paul Schneider is boring. Meanwhile, we see her ambush him with the divorce in a therapy session*, will barely explain anything to him, is callous about keeping their daughter away from him, and was carrying on an affair. I don’t know. It seems like they could’ve approached the divorce from a place that didn’t make Lynskey such a villain. Anna Camp’s character is way broader than the rest of the movie only for it to use her as a third act voice of reason, sort of. I felt pretty duped by how little Heather Graham was in the movie. Her placement on the poster gave me the wrong impression.
*Side Rant: The therapist scene is a great example of how the balance of the comedy and drama is all wrong here. The scene in which the therapist essentially breaks up with Schneider for Lynskey is meant to be darkly funny. That sets up a more absurdist perspective to the film, yet it then switches back to expecting the audience to take it all seriously at other points, when it’s convenient.
Yeah, I didn’t like this movie much. I think it may be that I just don’t care for Angus MacLachlan as a filmmaker. He also wrote (but didn’t direct) Junebug which I had similar issues with. I like few of the characters and the conflicts feel artificial.
Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend
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