Review: ‘The Answer Man’

It wasn’t until half way through this film that I realized I was just watching another version of “As Good As It Gets.” That’s not exactly a good thing. The story is about Arlen Faber (Jeff Daniels), a man who wrote a book twenty years ago entitled “Me and God,” in which he claimed to have actually spoken with God. The book spun off a whole other series of books including “The Me and God Diet” and “Understanding Me and God,” none of which were written by Arlen.

Arlen has been a shut in for quite a while, trying to figure out the meaning of life himself by reading large volumes of books on the subject. He’s the typical cranky, doesn’t want to deal with the outside world kind of author, and the moment anyone finds out who he is, they make his life an annoying hell. One day he throws his back out and has to crawl on his hands and knees to a chiropractor to get it straightened out. Turns out that the Chiropractor is the very lovely Elizabeth (Lauren Graham). After she fixes him, he starts to become a different person and of course he starts to fall for her.

The other plot to the story revolves around a local book store owner named Kris (Lou Taylor Pucci) who has just gotten sober at a center and is now trying to get his act straight. His girlfriend and co-worker Dahlia (Kat Dennings) lost the keys to the story while Kris was in rehab and now they’re running low on funds, unable to buy books, which is part of their business. When Arlen comes in to try and sell an entire series of books on God (not his own), and is refused by Kris it starts a war of Arlen trying to offload books to Kris, and Kris refusing. Kris eventually figures out who Arlen is and makes a trade. He’ll take Arlen’s books off his hands in exchange for questions on life. The two kind of start up a friendship from there.

My biggest problem with the film is that it all just feels like I’ve seen it before. Sure Jeff Daniels isn’t Jack Nicholson and the characters are different to a point, but it’s still a movie about a shut in author with OCD like issues finding love with a single mother and helping some one who has nothing in common with him. There’s no road trip or Cuba Good Jr, but it still feels the same.

The other issues I had with the film come from the middle and the end, when all the comedy is drained from the film and it meanders around for a while before giving us a very text book and anti-climactic ending. The finale isn’t anything we didn’t already know, and there are plenty of loose threads going on. The character of Kris suffers the most from this. He’s the one dealing with the most issues and suddenly we’re supposed to believe… well… what the film tells us to. It’s not very convincing.

Sadly the tone of the film comes off as very family friendly. It’s a movie that could be PG-13, but for some reason they felt the need to throw as many F-bombs in as possible. I’m usually not a content hound, but I just felt that it hurt the movie more than anything. All the swearing is unnecessary and go against the tone of the movie. This could be a PG-13 movie, and probably be a lot more likable if it was. But for an R-rated comedy it seems to take too many easy ways out and has a very family friendly message.

The actors all do good jobs and it’s easy to like Jeff Daniel’s character, but there aren’t any break out performances here. A lot of the characters are just going through the motions and some people just do things without any explanation behind them, and some of the most dramatic moments happen off screen and then we’re just told about them. There’s a moment when Lou Taylor Pucci’s character is going through a big emotional break down, but I don’t buy it for a second and the entire scene comes off as awkward as a result. I also never bought his alcoholism or the strugle he was really having with it.