C’mon C’mon
Directed by Mike Mills ★★★★
An uncle learns to see like a child.
“It’s easy to forget that Joaquin Phoenix is better than almost anyone at playing regular guys bewildered by life,” said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. In his latest film, the Oscarwinning star of Joker takes a tender turn as a New York City–based radio journalist who agrees to look after his sister’s 9-year-old son when the boy’s bipolar father is hospitalized. “Phoenix is an alert actor, attuned to wavy human signals that might sail by less sensitive performers.” And he’s terrific as a loving uncle who struggles at first to understand how a kid thinks. Though dramas in which an adult learns from a child are “generally a terrible idea,” writer-director Mike Mills (20th Century Women) “never lets the proceedings veer into sentimentality.” Meanwhile, young actor Woody Norman is “flat-out wonderful” as Jesse—a willful, whip-smart
mop-top who’s emotionally erratic, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Certain key exchanges between Phoenix and Norman are hilarious, and “sizzle with dramatic energy,” and even as we begin to worry that Jesse exhibits an undiagnosed mental illness, the film, shot in black-and-white, feels oddly hopeful. It can also feel chaotic, though, because the story “moves in hops, skips, and lurches.” But though C’mon C’mon is “loose and wandering to the point it can seem like it’s not about anything,” said Jessica Kiang in the Los Angeles Times, in the end we realize, “in a sudden gobstopper-blub of emotion,” that it’s that way for a reason. This movie wants to remind viewers of childhood, of crazy weekends, of the sound of the ocean, and of loving family members. “It wants to remind us of everything.” (In theaters only)