ABSURDLY ENTERTAINING
Seventeen years after they made Lost In Translation together, Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray are back, this time for a New York caper movie with a distinctive domestic twist.
Rashida Jones, with whom they collaborated on A Very Murray Christmas, provides something of a reality check as the actor’s down-to-earth daughter (and the writer-director’s on-screen alter ego). Laura (Jones), a well-heeled writer and mother of two, is struggling to keep her marriage afloat amid the competing demands of work and parenthood.
“I’m just the buzzkill waiting to schedule things,” she observes cannily at one point.
Suspecting her distracted, workaholic husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) of having an affair, Laura decides it’s time to consult an expert.
Big mistake.
On the phone from Paris, Laura’s wealthy, playboy father, Felix (Murray), fuels her paranoia, and when he lands in the Big Apple, the largerthan-life art dealer sweeps his daughter up into his own, elaborate sleuthing fantasy.
Arriving at her Soho apartment in a vintage red convertible, he persuades Laura – against her better judgment – to hire a babysitter so they can tail Dean and his workmates around lower Manhattan.
A picnic of caviar in the back seat, and a racing cap on his head, Felix is clearly enjoying the ridiculous stake-out far more than he should be. Perhaps it’s just an elaborate excuse to spend more time with the daughter he so obviously adores, despite their differences.
Even when the father and daughter’s madcap adventure is momentarily derailed by a policeman who pulls him over for speeding, Felix is unfazed.
After talking his way out of a ticket, he charms the officers into push-starting the temperamental vehicle.
Unperturbed by a lack of incriminating evidence – all the private investigator can come up with are photographs of Dean eating a sandwich in his office – Felix books a couple of tickets to Mexico, where Laura’s husband is attending a conference.
That’s when things get really silly.
On The Rocks is Coppola’s contemporary take on 1930s screwball comedies such as The Thin Man, with Myrna Loy and William Powell.
Sumptuously shot by cinematographer Phillipe Le Sourd, it takes full advantage of the prime Manhattan real estate that serves as its backdrop (the scene at Club 21 was shot at the table once reserved for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall).
But while the film is lighter and slighter than Coppola’s previous work, there’s still a poignancy in the characters’ desire to connect.
Meanwhile, the humdrum nature of Laura’s domestic situation contrasts with the exuberant physicality of the father/daughter romp.
Now screening at Palace Cinemas and available on Apple TV+ from October 23