By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — What do August Osage County, Death at a Funeral, Nora’s Will, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Wish I Was Here have in common? They all focus on squabbling dysfunctional families brought together by the death or dying of a mother or father. Grieving or the inability to grieve compels the characters to reveal secrets about themselves and their relationships to their parents, siblings, and spouses. More importantly, these movies are more moving and witty than the formulaic This Is Where I Leave You which revolves around the same themes.
Shawn Levy casts his film with talented actors and actresses like Jason Bateman, Adam Driver, Jane Fonda, and Tina Fey who deserve a cleverer and more original script. The patriarch of the Altman family has died. His sons and daughter return home for the funeral to learn from their mother Hillary (Fonda) that their father requested they sit shiva for seven days even though he was an atheist and she a Gentile.
Sitting shiva eventually forces them to disclose what is happening in their lives. Judd (Bateman) recently left his wife and his job because she was sleeping with his boss; bossy sister Wendy (Fey) is left during the week by her workaholic husband who must attend a business meeting; brother Paul (Corey Stoll) and his wife Alice (Kathryn Hahn) desperately want to have a baby and copulate whenever she is ovulating; and uninhibited brother Phillip (Driver) wisecracks about everything and consorts with Tracy (Connie Britton), a woman twice his age who is a psychiatrist like his mother.
After fifteen minutes, you can predict how their stories will unfold. Hillary embarrasses everyone by discussing the girth and length of her husband’s penis and by displaying her recently augmented breasts which are a recurring object of humor. She struck me as a reincarnation of Barbara Streisand’s Roz Fokker. Judd and Wendy gravitate to the beds of their high-school sweethearts played by Rose Byrne and Timothy Olyphant. Alice and Paul are overheard having sex broadcast over a baby monitor while company is visiting the bereaved family. Tracy gradually realizes that Phillip is too immature and irresponsible for her.
Despite its use of shiva as a narrative fulcrum, the film treats Judaism superficially. Rabbi Grodner (Ben Schwartz) is a hippy-dippy rabbi in the mold of Ben Stiller’s Rabbi Jake from Keeping the Faith. Whereas Jake adheres consistently to a Jewish Renewal model of his faith; Grodner just seems informal and inconsistent. He insists that the family sit shivah for seven days even though many Reform Jews observe only three. The closest he gets to performing a Jewish act is a graveside reading of the 23rd Psalm which is interrupted by Phillip driving a sports car with music blaring into the cemetery. The Altman siblings undermine whatever gravitas Grobner possesses by referring to him by his childhood nickname, Boner. When Hillary demands that her sons and daughter sit on low mourning chairs, Wendy reminds her that the chairs are where the family used to place their Christmas trees.
This Is Where I Leave You does have some funny scenes and poignant moments. Bateman, Driver, Fey, and Fonda do their best to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. At the end of the movie, however, you might feel relieved that the film is over and you can take the advice offered by its title.
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Baron is a professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com