And So It Goes

Film (2014)

With Michael Douglas (Oren Little), Diane Keaton (Leah), Sterling Jerins (Sarah), Rob Reiner (Artie), Frances Sternhagen (Claire), Frankie Valli (Club Owner)

Oren Little is a widowed, bitter and alienated real estate broker in Connecticut. Distanced from his only son, he seeks to give up everything he’s known and to retreat to his cabin in Vermont. Living in temporary quarters in a multiplex, he encounters Leah (Diane Keaton), an aspiring lounge singer, with whom he begins to quibble, banter, and to whom he gradually draws closer. A happenstance visit from his son and an extended stay with a granddaughter he didn’t know figures strongly in the evolution of mutual nurturing. To top it off there is a birth scene featuring Oren as midwife.

Rob Reiner has directed some of the great cinematic comedies of our time, notably This Is Spinal Tap (1984) which he co-wrote with Christopher Guest, The Princess Bride (1987) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). He is a highly accomplished and successful director, and sometimes writer, who has crafted a body of work which often reflects his particular blend of sensibilities, a species of wry humor gently embellished with an aura of sentiment.

In the case of When Harry Met Sally, that combination worked wonderfully, especially with a script fashioned by the great acerbic wit of Nora Ephron. Though the film itself is informal, there is an unintended majesty to it, much as there is in Woody Allen’s also informal, but inadvertently majestic Annie Hall (1977). In both cases, the content is not much different from anything else these directors do in this genre, but because of some distinctive chemistry between authoring, directing and acting, there is something magical in the result.

In And So It Goes the result is pleasantly entertaining though not quite so majestic. The leads, Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, are good actors and have a relaxed presence onscreen which gives them a settled appeal. Douglas plays a crank, but his endearing qualities are never too far out of sight. He is not, by any stretch, a character who exudes bitterness from every pore, but a slightly soured nice guy who comes back to life (and palatable behavior) without too much external prompting.

This is why the subplot involving Oren’s alienated son does not quite come off. If Oren is really not such a bad guy how did he manage to distance himself so completely from his son? And why exactly does his son wind up in jail? We do get an explanation of some sort in the film, but, in the end, it just seems like a narrative ploy to get Oren and Leah to play full time grandparents.

The same thing applies to Oren’s relationship with his other neighbors, an appealing African-American family. Oren is grouchy to them too, but, again, it doesn’t quite come off. Though Douglas created the iconically manipulative Wall Street shark Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), here, in a more aggrieved rather than aggressive role, he does not quite reach the sort of small-time embitterment that the role suggests.

Keaton, as Leah, is her usual charming and somewhat quirky self. Though there is a believable gentle chemistry between her and Douglas’ Oren, it does not quite convey the heightened level of passion that the script wants it to reach. Keaton’s offbeat charm works more subtly as a kind of lure, which is why her incredible performance in Annie Hall is so memorable; her indirectness yields a kind of unexpectedness that gets framed and honored in that film. Here, she is charming but less subtly interesting, and though the performance is nice, it is not magical.

Though not framing an iconic performance of that sort, Reiner makes quite good use of her here, especially in the singing scenes. Despite having sung in some films, including Annie Hall, she has actually never played a singer before and she really shows her stuff here. Not every song is fabulous, but some are very well done.

In some of those singing scenes, Frankie Valli shows up as a club owner, a great, sweet tease, especially given the recent release of Jersey Boys, the adapatation of the Broadway hit musical about The Four Seasons. And Reiner, in an awful hairpiece that provides a gag moment or two, has a supporting minor role as Artie, Leah’s accompanist. Frances Sternhagen (Claire) offers delightfully saucily tough-talking support as Oren’s real estate cohort.

Though one might have associated the title of the film with a 1983 Billy Joel standard of the same name, Reiner, in a group interview suggested the inspiration was more generic. In the same vein, it might equally have been titled That’s Life or You Never Know but something a bit more specifically descriptive might have fit better. Actually, the best one would have been Before Sunset, but that was grabbed by Richard Linklater for one of his great series of films featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy about an ongoing relationship.

Indeed, this pleasant-enough comedy does fine as far as it goes, but is not enough of an astute character study to really give a sense of unexpected sparkle in the encounter. It’s nicely suggestive in some ways, but one does not walk away from the film with a sense that these people belong together as much as the film wants one to believe.

– BADMan