Ben Stiller excels at playing fearful father in ‘Brad’s Status.’
The writer, director and actor Mike White has a knack for telling stories about the chasm between what people want and who they are. His sweet-and-sour satires are mine fields of disappointments, bitterness and despair, littered with broken promises and unrealized expectations. Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller), the middleaged familyman in White’s wonderful new comedy, “Brad’s Status,” is neither a weirdo nor a loser. He runs a small nonprofit based in Sacramento and enjoys a pleasant middle- class existence with his loving wife, Melanie (Jenna Fischer), and their smart, college-bound son, Troy (Austin Abrams).
But Brad worries intently aboutmoney and the future, and deep down he is troubled by what he suspects is his own mediocrity. He is reminded of this whenever he hears news of his four closest college buddies, who all have gone on to far greater material success than he has.
His old pal Billy (Jemaine Clement) is now a tech titan enjoying an early retirement on a Maui beach. Craig ( Michael Sheen) has become an in- demand political pundit and best- selling author. Jason (Luke Wilson) is a major Wall Street player with a private jet. And White himself pops up briefly, with tongue in cheek, to play Nick, an in-demand Hollywood director with a beach house that was re- cently featured in Architectural Digest.
In one of the movie’s wittiest touches, we first get a glimpse of these characters not as they really are but as dreamlike projections of Brad’s jealousy. The camera shows them strutting through their enviably perfect lives, accompanied by Brad’s sulky voice- over.
This takes us firmly into the realm of
themale midlife- crisis comedy, but White seems well aware of the potential pitfalls, and avoids them with a self-knowledge that his protagonist could use more of. The filmmaker is aided by one of Stiller’s richest performances in years.
The slender story is set in motion when Brad and Troy head to Boston on a collegescouting trip, with both Harvard and Tufts on the agenda. There’s a cringe-making beauty of a scene in which Brad realizes that his son has an excellent shot at getting into Harvard, and Stiller plays out his reaction in marvelously complex notes: a rush of pride at Troy’s accomplishments, a flush of shame at having underestimated him and a faint tinge of resentment that his child might soon eclipse him.
In other words, Brad’s weakness for comparing himself with others isn’t limited to his friends. But rather than milking the father- son relationship for cheap laughs, “Brad’s Status” gives them all sorts of realistically thorny and affectionate scenes to play, many of them rooted in the everyday foibles of traveling to a strange new place.
Brad, trying to upgrade their flight, is cruelly reminded that he’s an economy passenger. Troy accidentally misses his Harvard interview, creating an awkward situation that Brad ill-advisedly tries to fix by getting in touch with Craig, a member of the school faculty.
Although nearly every interaction forces Brad to consider his toxic self- regard, “Brad’s Status” isn’t about punishing him. At the heart of White’s work there’s not only a deep love for his characters but also a sincere belief in the possibility of their redemption.
“You’re 50 years old, and you still think that the world was made for you,” says a Harvard student (Shazi Raja) who winds up getting to know Brad more deeply than she expected. But fittingly, it’s Troy — appealingly played by Abrams as a young genius and an absentminded teenager rolled into one — who ultimately pulls Brad back to reality.
He leaves us with the realization that the solution to Brad’s problem — the proof that he’s always been meant for extraordinary things — has been under his nose all along.