The road to hell paved with clichés
Lazy storytelling will have audiences feeling an overwhelming sense of déjà vu
It’s a story as old as time, possibly even as old as Christopher Plummer. Three generations of a dysfunctional family take a crosscountry road trip in a decrepit vehicle that has more personality than they do, with the trip taking far longer than it should in this age of multi-lane highways.
The eldest swears and may be dying, but will prove to have a good soul. The sandwich-generation parent/child will have all manner of quirks, tics and neuroses. The youngest will be preternaturally wise, but also psychologically troubled.
Drugs or alcohol will be recklessly consumed; alt-rock and a few old standards will play on the soundtrack; someone will throw a cellphone out the window or turn off the GPS; someone else will get punched in the nose; and if you don’t learn any life lessons, you get your money back.
I apologize if that list of clichés describes Boundaries, but shame on writer-director Shana Feste for making it so easy to put the film into a nutshell. I didn’t even have to take out the nut.
The particulars: Jack Jaconi (Plummer) has just been kicked out of his old-age home and needs a place to crash.
Estranged daughter and single mom Laura ( Vera Farmiga) agrees to drive him in his ancient Rolls-Royce from Seattle to Los Angeles, where his other daughter (Kristen Schaal) will put him up.
Tagging along is Laura’s son, Henry (Lewis MacDougall), expelled from school for drawing
pornographic pictures of his teachers, something the film decides is adorable.
Jack has promised to help Laura pay for private school, and brings along a trunkful of weed to sell along the way. His first customers are a group of lawbreaking Buddhists — felonious monks, I guess you could call them.
Plummer is better than the material, but gamely soft-shoes his way through it with a twinkle in his eye and a curse on his lips. The same goes for Farmiga, who delivers a warm, human performance from beneath the pile of eccentricities with which she’s been saddled. (Among other things, her character is in therapy and has a thing for stray animals.)
Young MacDougall was the standout child actor in 2016’s A Monster Calls, and manages well enough here. I’m guessing he’ll look back on this movie as a detour in his career, unpleasant but necessary to get where he’s going. Viewers who have seen Lily Tomlin in Grandma, Around the Bend with Christopher Walken, or any number of similar stories can skip it, secure in the knowledge that they’ve already taken this trip.