By Jake Wilson
GOODRICH ★★★
(M) 111 minutes
As a young man, Michael Keaton starred in the hit comedy Mr Mom as a reluctant house-husband obliged to vacuum and shop for groceries while his wife goes to work, a hilarious role reversal in the eyes of 1980s Hollywood. How much has changed since? The question remains open in Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s Goodrich, with Keaton as Andy Goodrich, a workaholic Los Angeles gallery owner slipping into potential irrelevance (Keaton is 73, although youthful enough to pull off a character younger by a decade or more).
Michael Keaton play Andy Goodrich, who must care for his young twins (played by Jacob Kopera and Vivien Lyra Blair) in Goodrich.
Mr Goodrich has a lot on his plate, even before his wife (Laura Benanti) informs him over the phone she’s leaving him and going into rehab, making him the primary carer for their nine-year-old twins (Vivien Lyra Blair and Jacob Kopera). In between learning about basic household tasks such as boiling spaghetti, he still has a boutique gallery to run – and other relationships crying out for attention, notably with Grace (Mila Kunis), his adult daughter from a previous marriage, who’s about to become a mother.
All up, there are a lot of corny, old-fashioned elements in this slice of upmarket life, from the rippling arpeggios of Christopher Willis’ score to the big emotional speeches where the characters tell us how they really feel. Some scenes are simply clumsy, such as a visit to a feminist poetry night where it’s unclear how much satire is intended.
Michael Keaton and Mila Kunis play father and daughter Andy and Grace in Goodrich.
But if you can stomach all of that, Goodrich has its rewards. Much of Meyers-Shyer’s script appears to stem from first-hand observation of a specific milieu, including the turns of phrase used by the credibly obnoxious children (“If you didn’t want us to talk like we’re from LA,” says the hero’s young daughter, “you shouldn’t have raised us in LA.”)
The film is also a chance for Keaton to remind us how good he can be, especially when he has an acting partner who can keep up with him, such as Kunis or Michael Urie (as a younger, gay single dad who becomes a new friend, a dynamic that could have sustained a movie in itself).
Like many Keaton characters, Goodrich is a salesman even in his personal life, with a gift of the gab that allows him to skate over anything too tricky. But Keaton’s relationship with the viewer is another matter: rather than straining for likeability at all costs, his performance lets us judge how far Goodrich is capable of overcoming his self-involvement this late in the day.
Nor is Meyers-Shyer as straightforwardly sentimental as she looks. Deliberately or not, much of the film proceeds as a suite of variations on the theme of how best to deliver bad news: should you blurt it out, find ways to soften the blow, or evade the truth altogether?
Whichever option the characters pick, there’s a degree of painful comedy as well as drama in their efforts to process their own and other people’s emotions – or to cover them up with willed glibness.
Goodrich is released in cinemas on November 21.
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