The Accountant

A portrait of high functioning autism, or Batman with a Gun

the-accountant-posterAny points “The Accountant” earns as a portrait of high functioning autism are quickly erased when Gavin O’Connor’s film simply becomes Ben Affleck as Batman with a gun. The film hardly blends genres but mashes them up into a complex, albeit fun and thrilling action caper.

Affleck plays Christian Wolff (not really his name), an accountant in Plainfield, IL who secretly reviews the books of the worst criminals and drug cartels in the world. Born with a gift at math, puzzles and logic yet stifled socially due to his autism, he’s a natural at deciphering where lost money has gotten to and in turn keeping a low profile. Christian lives alone in a drab, undecorated, ranch house. He prepares three symmetrically cooked fried eggs each night for dinner, performs physical therapy on his body while blaring heavy metal and pops a Xanax at exactly 10:01 each night.

O’Connor could’ve stopped at having Christian be a meticulously perfect mathematical prodigy and, later, an assassin, but exploring his childhood dealing with autism gives him a provocative past, a cause and a vice to overcome throughout the film. And yet it becomes squandered when Christian’s father begins giving him super soldier training in martial arts and sharpshooting. His origin story is less of coping with a disability (or as someone who is differently abled, to be more accurate and politically correct) and more of a ruthless father (Andy Umberger) who pushes him to be a weapon. One version feels relatable to parents, and the other sounds like “Batman Begins.” Continue reading “The Accountant”

Rapid Response: The World According to Garp

Robin Williams is wonderful as a real everyman in George Roy Hill’s adaptation of John Irving’s novel.

Robin Williams passed away this week, and in every tribute written about him (including one of  my own) he was described as “a great comedian but also…” In another tribute this week I wrote that being a great comedian was enough because he was a wild man while doing it. But more often his praise as an exceptional actor was that he could take surprising, dramatic turns in movies like “Good Will Hunting,” “One Hour Photo,” “World’s Greatest Dad” or “Insomnia” while also playing the fool in “Aladdin,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” or “The Birdcage” or the exuberant hero in “Good Morning, Vietnam” or “Dead Poets Society”.

One movie that rarely crossed the threshold into conversation was “The World According to Garp”, George Roy Hill’s 1982 black comedy based on the controversial and bestselling novel by John Irving. Williams made it near the end of his run on “Mork and Mindy”, and what’s immediately surprising is how ordinary Williams comes across, considering he was famous for playing an alien. This isn’t strictly a dramatic performance, but come to think of it he probably never says a funny thing despite the movie being a comedy. Much of the comedy comes from the inanity and anarchy going on around him, and Williams has both the toothless likability as well as the energy to keep pace with it all.  Continue reading “Rapid Response: The World According to Garp”

This is 40

Do you finally become the person you were always meant to be at the age of 40? Judd Apatow is now 45, and “This is 40,” his fourth film, is him struggling with his mid-life crisis. Apatow is finally showing his colors as a filmmaker, and the result is an unfinished, messy movie.

Maybe that’s life, or more specifically marriage, full of incomplete projects, spontaneous and tumultuous emotions and a life that seems to go on forever. But there are rocky, yet healthy relationships and then there are relationships when it’s really best to just pull the plug.

Something about “This is 40” is missing. Apatow knows how to write a good script, and he can create effortless chemistry between Paul Rudd and Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann because he’s writing so close to the heart. But when the film is another jumble of obscure pop culture minutiae (is “Lost” still a thing?), hipster weirdness (Charlyne Yi?), stream of consciousness vulgarity, nonsensical cameos (Billie Joe Armstrong?) and overwrought drama, all of which were problems in his last film “Funny People,” the act just starts to get old. And if this is film is about anything, it’s that getting old sucks.

Rudd plays Pete, who is turning 40 in a few days, just around the same time as his wife Debbie (Mann). Debbie chooses to lie about her age under the pretense that she doesn’t suddenly want to start shopping at Ann Taylor Loft, just one example of how Apatow’s film likes to throw out “40 stuff.”

Even the vulgarity, not just the pop culture references, is slated at an older audience. Annie Mumolo gets a big laugh talking about how she can no longer feel anything in her vagina, as does Melissa McCarthy during the film and during the credits as she spouts profanity to the school principal in defense of her son, but none of it has the outrageous appeal of an actual set piece that we might’ve seen in something like “Bridesmaids” or even parts of “Knocked Up.”

Apatow even stages these scenes as clearly improvised riffing, constantly cutting away and back for individual punch lines without actually weaving the comedy into the narrative.

So as Pete struggles with a failing record label and Debbie attempts to discover how $12,000 is missing from her clothing store, “This is 40” wallows in the minutiae of white people problems. Having high cholesterol or playing iPad games in the bathroom for too long sometimes earns about as much weight as the revelation of a surprise pregnancy.

Important and interesting characters like Pete’s father (Albert Brooks) or Debbie’s personal trainer (Jason Segel) come and go. Discussions about money, health and romance erupt into enormous, mounting conflicts and then dissipate into inconsequential drama about pop music the next.

Apatow doesn’t capture the feel of a generation or being a certain age as well as something like HBO’s “Girls,” which Apatow produces. It’s full of lovely, funny and charming moments, but is it a movie you’ll want to live with and cherish when you’re Apatow’s age?

2 ½ stars