Bill Murray uplifts ‘On the Rocks’
On the Rocks Rated: R for some language/sexual references. Running time: 96 minutes. 666out of 4
Sofia Coppola has the ability to suggest a complicated set of emotional dynamics without overtly stating anything. She just puts us in the room with the characters, and we gradually figure them out. Sometimes we end up understanding them better than they understand themselves.
This is especially the case with “On the Rocks,” which, in terms of story, is just an extended anecdote. But in the interplay of the characters, it presents a complex mass of individual desires, hopes and insecurities that threaten a young family.
On the surface, this is all that’s going on: Laura (Rashida Jones) is a young mother, married to Dean (Marlon Wayans), an up and coming entrepreneur in Manhattan. He travels a lot and works long hours, and she begins to suspect that he’s having an affair. So, she turns to her flashy, fabulously successful father (Bill Murray), and the two start to spy on the husband.
In terms of story, the main suspense turns on the question, “Is he cheating or not?” This is interesting, but it’s not that interesting, especially as it’s pretty easy to guess which way the movie’s going to go on this question. The pleasure of the film lies elsewhere, in things implied but unsaid.
One implicit element is an unacknowledged competition between the husband and Laura’s father. The father is a big shot, very rich. The husband is doing OK, but he’s not fully arrived. When he comes home from work, he tells Laura about all the exciting things going on with his new business, and she barely reacts. Why? Because she was born rich. She takes wealth for granted. The husband probably wasn’t born rich, and he’s understandably proud of the moves he’s making.
Another implicit element: The father leads a fun life, but as is often the case with a life of fun, it’s a little bit lonely. He likes being needed by his daughter. He likes getting to hang out. He likes being the man in her life that she can trust. And while Laura is skeptical of her father, and resents that he left her mom many years ago, she
knows she really can trust him.
None of this is written down or spoken. It’s just in there in the mix, and everything else is just a matter of getting the right actors to embody it.
Those of us who watch movies and avoid TV have been mostly deprived of Rashida Jones, but her casting here is inspired. As
the daughter of Quincy Jones, she, like Sofia Coppola, knows what it’s like to have a father who is the focus of every room he enters. Jones could have easily disappeared in this largely passive and reactive role, but she and Coppola keep Laura’s internal story at the center of the audience’s concern.
As for Bill Murray, it’s just a shame he can’t make a Sofia Coppola movie every year. As in “Lost in Translation,” Coppola brings out all of Murray’s many colors, sometimes all at once — his flippancy, his authority, his warmth, his isolation, his expressiveness, his inability to say everything he wants to say.
A particularly good scene comes when the father is stopped by cops after going through a red light. As the daughter watches from the front seat, he avoids a ticket through sheer force of charm. The scene works in three ways: It’s a nice character moment. It’s an exceptional Bill Murray moment. And it’s the sort of incident that a daughter would remember affectionately, years later, when Dad is no longer around.
It’s this kind of richness that “On the Rocks” offers — not every minute, but often enough, so that we come away feeling expanded, like we’ve been somewhere and have come to know some people.