REVIEW: Brad’s Status puts Ben Stiller at the centre of yet another movie midlife crisis

REVIEW: Brad’s Status sees Ben Stiller revelling in his favourite kind of character: a man in the throes of a midlife crisis.

BRAD’S STATUS (M)

Rating: three stars (3 out of 5)

Director: Mike White (Year of the Dog)

Starring: Ben Stiller, Austin Abrams, Jenna Fischer, Michael Sheen, Jemaine Clement, Luke Wilson.

About to have his fill of a glass half-empty

If Ben Stiller has a stock character, it is that of a whiny, well-compensated male in the throes of a mid-life crisis.

While the actor could indeed handle a movie like Brad’s Status in his sleep, Stiller does hustle something alert and relatively affecting from this very familiar material.

He plays Brad, a 47-year-old man who is fretting that his life may have already peaked some time ago.

Ben Stiller plays his stock character — a whiny, well-compensated male in the throes of a mid-life crisis.

An ongoing commitment to listen to his conscience and work for the greater good in the not-for-profit sector - much to the approval of his loving wife (Jenna Fisher) - has not been fulfilling enough for Brad.

Neither has been having a set of highly successful friends (played by Michael Sheen, Luke Wilson, Jemaine Clement and this film’s writer-director, Mike White) from his college days.

The incessant reminders on social media of how great their lives have turned out has not done wonders for Brad’s fragile self-confidence.

The rising stocks of his only child Troy (Austin Abrams) also fails to lift Brad out of the doldrums. Largely because Troy is a gifted young music student who looks like he will be accepted into all the top-flight colleges that turned down Brad at the same age.

Ben Stiller in Brad’s Status.

Calling this quiet, insightful film a comedy is pushing it. If anything, the movie is closer in feel and philosophy to the recent American indie drama Beatriz at Dinner (coincidentally scripted by the writer-director of Brad’s Status, Mike White).

Nevertheless, it does chart a roundabout path into a viewer’s good graces by continually presenting some telling X-rays of Brad’s broken spirit.