Making a kin-nection
Sam Harper is a fast-talking New York salesman with money and mensch problems, and the way Chris Pine plays him in “People Like Us,” you either want to hit Sam or help him out. Which means the film is doing something half-right.
A standard movie type — think Jack Lemmon in “The Apartment,” Tom Hanks in “Nothing in Common,” Hugh Grant in “About a Boy” or Tom Cruise in “Rain Man” and “Jerry Maguire” — Sam is into avoidance. When he gets news that his dad, a famous music producer, has died, Sam does all he can so he and his girlfriend (Olivia Wilde) can skip the funeral. But once he’s in L.A. to deal with his bitter mom (a salty Michelle Pfeiffer), Sam is handed a bag of cash his dad left for him ... to deliver to a mystery woman and her 11-year-old son.
The woman, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks), is messed up, too, which is no surprise. Nor is the bond that grows between Frankie’s son (a good Michael Hall D’Addario) and Sam. What’s unexpected is how long the film draws out its conceit — Frankie doesn’t know she’s Sam’s half-sister, also ignored by their free-livin’ dad — without being as bad as it may have been.
You can see Sam’s brand of gotta-prove-myself drive in director Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote the movie with Roberto Orci. The pair penned some of the last decade’s biggest action blockbusters, including two “Transformers” flicks and 2009’s great “Star Trek” reboot. While such desperatation works against the movie, it still wins us over.
Pine’s earnest slickness is effective; if it weren’t, we’d tune out the heart that “People Like Us”
really wants us to know it has. And Banks is appealingly vinegary, though Frankie’s workingclass life requires more “acting.”
“People Like Us” should have let all these people stand still long enough to be interesting instead of rushing them at us. But its hard sell draws us in, even as we know we’re being manipulated.