Viewed in
2011
Formats
DVD
Premise
Ben Stiller stars a 40 year old carpenter who starts dating his brother's young assistant.
Liked
Greta Gerwig.
Disliked
Ben Stiller's character.
Thoughts
Compared to other indie genre films, this was middle of the pack.
As expected, it had quirky characters saying quirky things in quirky situations, usually with quirky music in the background. It was cool to see Stiller returning to the indie genre. I thought he did a very good job of creating organic performances in these kind of films, like Zero Effect. But Gerwig stole the show as an earnest, huggable, lost soul. She was very charming and carried the heart of the story.
With a much ado about nothing plot, the pace could drag without characters to care for. Which leads to my issue with Stiller's character. Obviously, the titular character was meant to be a mess, but I just found him to be very whiny, obtuse, and hopeless. His behavior and flaws were very hard to relate to, despite Stiller's strong performance.
I really enjoyed Greta Gerwig, but Stiller's character just really brought the movie down. He reminded me of Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg character in The Social Network. Both movies dared the audience to care for very unlikable protagonists. I took the dare, but unlike Zuckerberg, never was there a moment that I understood or had empathy for Mr. Greenberg.
What I would change
Somehow made Greenberg more relateable.
