DON’T ASK ABOUT BRAD’S STATUS
If you enjoy watching Ben Stiller mope, then do we have the perfect film for you
“There are moments you realize your entire life’s work is absurd, and you have nothing to show for it.” So says Brad Sloan, the selfobsessed, 47-year-old, almost-one-percenter played by Ben Stiller in Brad’s Status.
The statement requires a little unpacking. Is Brad saying if his work were more meaningful, he’d be happier? Is he saying having more money would make it worthwhile? And when did generation X turn into baby boomers? (Watch out, millennials; you’re next.)
Brad will spend the next hundred minutes attempting to answer at least two of those questions, all while scurrying around Boston, trying to arrange a Harvard placement interview for his son, Troy (Austin Abrams), a budding musician so laid back he accidentally missed his first interview slot. The kid is nonchalance personified.
Stiller has a habit of playing Troy’s exact opposite, characters of supreme chalance. Check out his rogue’s gallery of disaffected middle-aged men in While We’re Young, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Greenberg.
Brad is almost an amalgam of these characters, combining the insecurity of the first, the anger of the third and Mitty’s imagination, which he uses (sparked by that old envy generator, social media), to picture his old college buddies — Michael Sheen, Luke Wilson, Jemaine Clement and writer-director Mike White — living far better, more hedonistic lives than he is.
But like the Temptations sang back in ’71, it’s just his imagination, running away with he. (Sorry, it was either proper grammar or proper scanning.) White’s screenplay keeps trying to remind Brad (and by proxy us,
too) that his life, with a loving wife (Jenna Fischer), and a job as the founder and CEO of a nonprofit, isn’t exactly a bed of nails.
When he half converses with, half hits on a whip-smart university student (Shazi Raja), she gently takes him down a peg by asking: “Do you even know poor people?” This after he’s had a sex fantasy about her and told us in one of his many voice-overs: “I suddenly felt a deep grief for all the women I would never love.” Please. Brad’s Status won’t be an easy sell, even to the main character’s generational contemporaries. “A man mopes and yearns” doesn’t sound like the best way to spend $12 and a hundred minutes, and that’s essentially what you’re looking at here.
There’s an arc of sorts, with Brad asking early on of the world: “When did we fall out of love with each other?” And imagining variations on his son’s future success, before coming to realize when it comes to the stories of your children’s lives, you wind up a supporting character at best.
There are other life lessons in the mix, although one wonders if a walk in the woods (the Germans have a word for it: waldeinsamkeit!) wouldn’t have the same effect as Brad’s frantic overthinking of his life. But you take wisdom where you can find it, and Brad’s Status may resonate with some mid-life viewers, particularly those who find themselves looking at a version of Stiller’s clenched-jaw, angst-ridden face in the mirror.
BRAD’S STATUS ★ ★ out of 5 Cast: Ben Stiller, Austin Abrams, Michael Sheen, Jenna Fischer Director: Mike White Duration: 1 h 41 m