St. Vincent really
straddles the line between being genuinely fun and being too hokey for its own
good. It’s okay for a film to be
formulaic, so long as the dialogue and performances pick up the slack that the
plotting leaves, and this film seems to only truly deliver through the vessel
of one actor: the ineffable Bill Murray.
As per always, Murray is a joy to see on screen, his trademark
irreverence toward the world making his humor distinctive and instantly
recognizable. Equally impressive is the
way that he tinges his cynicism with melancholy, giving depth to a character
that would otherwise be just another grumpy old man cliché. And yet, Murray is perhaps the only thing
about this film that rises above mediocrity, and that can make a slog of the
scenes where he isn’t present.
The plot formula is one we’ve all seen before, with a grumpy
older man, the titular Vincent (Murray), finding himself babysitting his new
neighbor’s wimpy, nerdy kid. The
unlikely pair start to get close, with Vincent teaching the kid to stand up for
himself while instilling the vices of gambling and barhopping into his young,
yet somehow unshakably pure mind.
Meanwhile, the kid’s virtues start to soften Vincent’s heart and
demonstrate that he’s not such a bad guy after all, and yeah, you can see the other trite plot details coming from a mile away.
Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if the writing were solid, but
it mostly isn’t. Vincent as a written
character seems to be closer to Dennis
the Menace’s Mr. Wilson than the persona we normally see Murray adopt, and
the only reason Vincent is made even remotely funny is through the sheer force
of Murray’s expert delivery. Every other
character feels fresh from the factory, from the saccharinely sweet child
character, to the overworked, barely-making-ends-meet divorced mom, to
Vincent’s pregnant prostitute girlfriend, who may sound like an original
character, but mostly serves the role of being Vincent’s non-child
confidant. It all feels so formulaic
that there doesn’t really seem to be a point to the film other than seeing
Murray make what should have been a forgettable role into the only standout
performance in the whole production.
And, unfortunately, that’s ultimately what makes this one a
loser as far as I’m concerned, because by the film’s latter half, Murray’s
wise-cracking amoralisms take a backseat to the aggrandizement of Vincent’s
better qualities, which ultimately makes him a more boring character than he
was before. The film’s climax is
literally the kid character giving a speech about all of Vincent’s great
qualities and why, even though he is a jerk, deep down Vincent is still a great
man. All the build-up for that scene is
so devoid of comedy, including a forced stroke-and-recovery mini-arc for Murray
to suffer through, that it sucks the life out of what had until then been a
passable exercise in traditionalism.
I’d really only recommend this for the die-hard Bill Murray
fans, for you are the people most likely to at least glean some worthy
enjoyment from his persona. However, the
film’s plot is so full of cliché and overused tropes that there really doesn’t
seem to be much of a point to it beyond its star’s performance, and even that
is given the short shrift by the end.
Have a favorite Bill Murray film? Tell us in the comments below.
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