(whole lotta spoilers)
Ben Stiller is a gifted performer. Hilarious in the hit “Meet the Parents” movies, Stiller plays the well intentioned, earnest schmuck with ease. Mercilessly mocked and manipulated as he tries to impress his girlfriend’s no nonsense, lunatic father – while also trying to maintain his sanity – he never fails to crack us up. In “Reality Bites” (1994), he’s got the corporate stooge role and plays it to bloodless perfection. He’s all pander and compromise – until he’s had enough of Ethan Hawke’s cynical chill dude act and then he unloads with both guns firing. Then there’s also his TV Sketch Comedy Show, “The Ben Stiller Show” (1992), where he did his spot on Springsteen impression. That “Sesame Street” inspired “Counting with Bruce Springsteen” skit was a beautiful bit of inspired goofiness.
Nowadays, Stiller is still a box office champ who, as recently as five years ago, was able to score a three hundred million dollar gross on the third “Night at the Museum” movie. His “Zoolander” sequel was an unfunny mess of bad ideas that struggled to scrape up even a small gross, but Stiller can still open a flick better than most.
Far away from the crowd pleasers and the gigantic grosses, Stiller, to his credit, regularly ventures down indie lane to grapple with much more relatable characters and grounded stories.
His last stab at indie glory, “Brad’s Status” (2017), found Stiller playing middle aged Brad Sloan. He’s an uncomfortably married man wracked by feelings of inadequacy on the eve of a trip to Boston where he will guide his eighteen year old son, Troy (Austin Abrams) through a series of college interviews.
As the film opens, lying in bed, with his wife asleep next to him, Brad’s inner thoughts reveal a man suffering from an acute case of the grass is greener. In Brad’s head, his friends from college have all gone on to bigger and better things and he has remained stuck in the muck of small ambitions and small rewards operating his own modest non-profit.
Number one on Brad’s list of pals with phenomenally better lives than him is Hollywood movie director Nick Pascale. Brad pictures him living a decadent life at his mansion. Coming in at number two is hedge fund billionaire Jason Hatfield (Luke Wilson) who, as if that wasn’t enough, has the perfect wife and perfect kids, too. Number three is Billy Wearslter (Jaime Clement) who was so fabulously successful that he retired early to a sandy paradise with two hot young babes to spend the rest of his days surfing and f*cking. To a sexually frustrated Brad, Billy’s life might represent the gold standard. Lastly, there is Craig Fisher (Michael Sheen). He’s only worked for the White House, banged out a bunch of best sellers and regularly appeared on TV just to rub it all in Brad’s face – at least, that’s how Brad sees it.
On top of all that, Brad’s only employee Chris Kanew (Adam Capriolo) has quit to go into banking. When it rains it pours and then it snows and maybe there’s a hurricane in there somewhere. Brad would do well to bundle up.
The raging fire of envy that threatens to burn through every last bit of Brad’s self-esteem is so out of control that he accidentally wakes up his wife to ask her whether her parents are giving their house to her when they die – ouch!
Off to Boston they go. First, though, Brad gets embarrassed at the airport when he unsuccessfully tries to upgrade his flight to business class. He’s a silver flyer member living a silver life.
Once in Boston, a crisis hits immediately when Troy tells his dad that he got the wrong day and missed his interview with Harvard. Brad takes it worse than Troy. He tries to talk the Harvard reps present into seeing his son anyway, and, then, when that doesn’t work, starts in on his son. Brad’s fighting two battles – his son’s and his own. He’s losing both.
Then he remembers that his best selling author friend, Craig, might be able to pull some strings. He calls him and leaves a message.
Meanwhile, Brad’s frustration with himself and his friends grows when he finds out that he wasn’t invited to Nick’s wedding. Out of their league and out of the loop, Brad’s almost boiling over with bitterness, so much so that his son can read it on his face. His son rightly recognizes that his Dad’s friends are a bunch of dicks. Troy is secretly the actual adult on this trip.
A traffic jam of toxic thoughts are slowly inching their way through Brad’s head. It’s so bad that, when he finds out his friend Craig has managed to snag Troy a new meeting with Harvard, Brad goes from elation to worrying about his son achieving greater success than him in record time.
Lazily, the filmmakers choose to play out Brad’s worry about being “passed” by his son in a voice over instead of incorporating it passively, via subtext, in exchanges between father and son. This is strange because they have already set up Brad’s character as being monumentally insecure. It would only follow that his insecurity would poison the waters of this trip. Troy is interviewing at Harvard – a college Brad could not get into. Naturally, the thought of his son surpassing him would be on his mind. Yet, the voice over is introduced as if this is something that is not blindingly obvious. An opportunity is missed. What did Lubitsch say about giving the audience two plus two but letting them answer it?
Brad’s first genuine jolt of sunshine comes at dinner with Anaya (Shazi Raja) and Maya (Luisa Lee), two of Troy’s female friends who both happen to attend Harvard. Brad’s face lights up when Anaya (Shazi Raja) compliments him on his life’s work – the non-profit. That’s the same non-profit Brad’s been bashing for the past few days. Not only that, but she had his friend, Craig, as a teacher, the previous year, and found him condescending and sexist.
It would be accurate to say that Brad really likes Anaya. They have hit it off immediately. Brad is clearly enjoying the spike to his self-esteem – the fact that it came courtesy of a beautiful young woman doesn’t hurt either. In record time, Brad’s daydreaming about living his buddy Billy’s life with Anaya and Maya as his sexually insatiable hot young babes.
It’s clear that Brad is sleepwalking his way into a mid life crisis of a disaster. Sexually frustrated, professionally frustrated and away from his wife for the weekend, he is very vulnerable to any woman – let alone a very young and beautiful woman – who sprinkles him with compliments and smiles.
After dinner, Anaya invites the boys to drink the night away at a local bar. Both decline, but it is clear Brad wanted to go. Troy even picks up on this, though, his dad, unconvincingly, denies it.
Sure enough, later that same night, with Troy fast asleep, Brad slips out of their hotel room and heads down to that bar where surely more compliments and smiles and maybe something even more tantalizing awaits.
Some movies pull punches. They purposely avoid opportunities to complicate their characters and the lives they are living. They do this for a number of reasons and one of those reasons has to do with preserving the likeability of the protagonist. That seems to be the case here.
People screw up from time to time. That’s life. Men who are sexually and professionally frustrated, going through what looks like the beginnings of a nervous breakdown while they are away from their wives drinking at a bar late at night with an admiring young woman as company might just screw up the most. Brad’s self-esteem was in the toilet and this lovely young thing fished it out, wiped it dry, put a new coat of paint on it and he chooses to spit in her face? Huh?
The filmmakers have chosen to pull that punch and the result is a film with a lot less drama, a lot less moral ambiguity and lot less realism. What could have been!
So, Brad doesn’t try to work the connection he has with Anaya, in hopes of, at least, further spikes to his self-esteem – if not something even more pleasurable – but, instead, decides to insult her. What follows is a withering retort from Anaya that puts Brad in his place with all his white male privilege and first world problems.
The fact that Anaya is right is hardly relevant. We know Brad’s got it good. We know his self-pity is a sort of silly fantasy in and of itself. He’s comparing himself to millionaires and billionaires. Few would come out unscathed from such a ridiculous exercise in self-annihilation. His wife tells hims as much early on.
Yes, Anaya rightly pops every last balloon at Brad’s pity party, but the scene feels more like a dodge than a dagger. The filmmakers set up a protagonist to fall and fall far only to yank him back from the abyss at the last moment.
Moving on from that missed opportunity, Brad has dinner with his old White House/TV friend Craig who has just flown into town. The humiliation Brad faced at the airport returns in a much more personal and devastating way when he finds out that Craig spoke at the memorial for a professor who was a major mentor of Brad’s. Heck, Brad didn’t even know he died. Even Craig mentions that Brad was the professor’s favourite student, “back in the day.” Another missed invitation – this one far more cutting.
Doesn’t take long for the dinner to turn into a disaster. It is played really well – probably the best scene in the movie. Brad’s an open wound and it only takes a “back in the day” and “your little thing” – referring to Brad’s non-profit – for the blood to start spurting again.
The trigger, though, is when Brad suggests that there was always a competitive element to his and Craig’s relationship. Craig shoots him a confused look. Then, for the kicker, mentions that he hasn’t thought of Brad in that way for years. Ouch! Shortly after that, Brad leaves the table and doesn’t come back.
In Brad’s defence, Craig is full of himself. His ego now fat from being very well fed for a very long while, Craig throws around its weight with little thought given to who it may smack upside the head. Have enough people tell you how special you are for a long enough time and you’re bound to eventually take their word for it. In fact, you’ll be smiling when you do.
Both actors are pitch perfect in this scene. Sheen’s Craig is the beauty pagent winner. Stiller’s Brad is the ugly hag. Competition? Hah! Though you know Brad is in an emotional tailspin even before Craig starts cluelessly firing off one bullet of a brag after another at him, you still recognize that Anaya’s read on Mr. White House was spot on. He’s an unreachable bore who is laughing atop a mountain he has made himself out of the endless ass kissings he’s been on the receiving end of for the past decade or more. The air is thin up there and so is the humility.
In the end, all is well. The audience gets their pat on the head and their cookie and the film fades out. Stiller maintains his good guy image and the film lies a little bit. Everybody goes home happy at what has been swept under the rug. Ho-hum.
Some bunt and some swing for the fences. This film is a competently laid bunt down the 3rd base line that gets the batter safely to 1st. Well done. I just hope these guys don’t make a boxing movie any time soon.
