Opposites attract in far-fetched ways
Can a middle-aged straight man from small-town Mississippi find happiness with a transgender junkie prostitute in seedy Hollywood?
That’s the premise of “Anything,” writer-director Timothy McNeil’s sometimes awkward but at times unexpectedly tender film, based on his play, that gives longtime character actor John Carroll Lynch a starring role.
Lynch is Early Landry, a 55-year-old man living in Crane, Miss., who is grieving his wife’s death in a car accident. After he attempts suicide, his sister Laurette (Maura Tierney) brings him to Los Angeles to live with her dysfunctional family, which includes disabled husband Ted (Christopher Thornton) and teenage son Jack (Tanner Buchanan, the president’s son in “Designated Survivor”).
Early and Laurette love each other, but they can only take each other’s presence in limited doses. So after Early’s insurance settlement from the accident comes through, he moves into a small apartment in Hollywood, which Early tells Laurette is “just far enough from you — and I mean that in the most loving way possible.”
The apartment is in a rundown building filled with the kind of people you can’t find in Mississippi. Bald, squarely dressed and with a Southern accent, Early is “like Andy Griffith’s sad brother” to one resident.
Early meets cute with his next-door neighbor, who calls herself Freda Von Rhenburg (Matt Bomer). Freda is a mess; she abuses drugs and hangs out with fellow prostitutes on the street. And yet her feminine presence is exactly what Early needs, and Early’s moral steadiness is what Freda needs.
The situation is preposterous, and yet Lynch and Bomer make it work; they actually have real chemistry together.
“I came here with a pulse and a desire to die, and that’s about it,” Early tells Freda. “But I didn’t. So you’ve already done something.”
But “Anything” often strains credulity. Early takes it upon himself to help Freda kick her addiction to drugs, and boy, was that easy. When Early invites his sister’s family over to meet Freda, Laurette, the L.A. resident, loudly reveals herself to be way more intolerant than small-town Southerner Early in a ridiculous, over-the-top scene (Tierney’s role is thankless).
And as to the Early-Freda relationship itself, no spoilers revealed here. Suffice to say that McNeil plays it way too safe. Trying to have it both ways, he satisfies no one.