THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED) – The Review

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED) is currently streaming on Netflix

Review by Stephen Tronicek

The first character that we’re introduced to in THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), Noah Baumbach’s new best movie, ever is Danny (Adam Sandler) who feels like a pretty good representation of the film itself. As he drives around the streets of New York City, looking for a parking spot, his college-age daughter in tow, you see kindness in almost all of his actions. A need to please and connect with the young woman about to go off to college. And yet, every once in awhile, he snaps. Maybe it is the inability to actually find a parking spot, maybe it is the festering disconnect that he is having with his separated wife, maybe it is everything, but when push comes to shove Danny Meyerowitz screams f-words at drivers who can’t hear him when he doesn’t get his way.

How all of this ties into the thematic material of this incredible film is that each character is a microcosm of what the film is attempting. As the Meyerowitz’s come together, in a way that seems almost coincidental, and clash with each other about life, love, and family, the film itself keeps the audience from an arm’s length from the truth. For as much of the plot of the film is based in dialogue, none of the dialogue is very direct at all. Much like Baumbach’s other films, the characters here talk a lot, but they dance around the burning core of the film’s emotionality, never really spelling out what is wrong with them until a paramount moment that forces them too.

This makes for some really engaging drama in that the audience is constantly forced to decipher what anybody is actually saying, a balance that Baumbach has stricken before. What keeps all of it from becoming vapid is the both Baumbach’s direction and his editor seem perfectly matched. Part of the reason why the audience has to be engaged in the conversation is that Baumbach shoots his conversations in single shots and double shots, and cuts between them extremely quickly. This type of editing in effect is the film telling us that these people are talking over each other so quickly that even if they attempted to sit down and figure out what was actually wrong with all of them, they’d just end up putting each other down. The film developing the characters to a point of talking to each other is a great arc and the editing expertly evolves with this.

Baumbach’s talent of casting actors is honed to a fine point here, especially with the casting of Adam Sandler. Sandler has produced and starred in some truly horrendous works over the past few years, since his flagship turn in Punch Drunk Love, but he’s so good in The Meyerowitz Stories that you can’t help but identify the film as an interesting case study of his talents as an actor. Sandler is playing a Sandler character, an oafish man, seemingly beat down by life, that has a bit of a funny voice affectation, but every time he seems to get too close to what makes his other characters and films not work (i.e. not realizing that gross-out jokes, while not being necessary without merit do tend to exacerbate your tone and therefore your audience), he’s restrained back down to Earth, making this one of his best performances and also one of the best of the year. Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, and Emma Thompson all show up as other Meyerowitz players and while all three have been criminally underutilized in the past couple of years, each of them also provides some of the best performances of the year, especially Hoffman, who hasn’t been this good in a long time.

The Meyerowitz Stories is about a family developing into a functioning group, and in that way, it seems the perfect companion to Baumbach’s previous more nihilistic work (especially The Squid and the Whale). People come together and finally, after years of ignoring each other, find a way to get along. Much like the Sandler case, one can’t help but view the film by way of evolution in the artist’s oeuvre, a logical step towards optimism that is so joyous and comforting that you can’t help but feel good about life.

5 out of 5