Hard to sympathize with this NYC family
THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED)
JUST because something is timely doesn’t make it watchable, or, at any rate, enjoyably so. Noah Baumbach’s Netflix comedy, “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” mines the fertile territory of aging boomer parents and chafing middle-aged siblings, but with the cantankerous voices of Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman constantly talking over each other.
Hoffman is bearded and grumbly as the Meyerowitz patriarch, a Manhattanbased sculptor named Harold who regards himself as underappreciated despite decades of recognition from museums and academics. Now mostly retired, he lives in a well-appointed uptown brownstone with his bohemian, alcoholic second wife (Emma Thompson). Harold’s son Danny (Sandler), recently separated and unemployed, is staying with them temporarily, while his other, more well-to-do son Matthew (Stiller) occasionally pops in from the West Coast. Harold’s frumpy daughter Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) shows up now and again, an afterthought until the film’s eleventh hour. The three siblings are semiestranged but attempt to sideline their differences when Harold’s health declines.
It’s fun to see Sandler rise to the occasion of an articulate screenplay that doesn’t revolve around kicks in the nuts; in return, he grounds some of Baumbach’s most New York-elitist dialogue. He and Stiller also make a believable pair of siblings, easily riled fury simmering just below nice-guy surfaces. Brief appearances by Candice Bergen, Judd Hirsch, Sigourney Weaver, Rebecca Miller and Adam Driver breathe some air into Danny and Matthew’s journey toward learning empathy for their ailing dad. Grace Van Patten, as Danny’s college-bound daughter Eliza, is also a welcome comedic presence; her family screenings of her porncentric art films are amusingly awkward — and pave the way, of course, for another onanistic artist in the family.
Running time: 110 minutes. Not rated (nudity, profanity). Now playing.