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Bill Murray in St Vincent: the grouch does it (all over) again Bill Murray in St Vincent: the grouch does it (all over) again
(about 1 hour later)
Does anyone remember The Hidden, a nifty, nasty and inventive 1987 sci-fi B movie with Kyle MacLachlan? It’s about an alien organism of maximum hostility and violence that can transfer itself from one human host to another, each time discarding the previous used-up host-corpse. And it never dies: it just reappears in another guise.Does anyone remember The Hidden, a nifty, nasty and inventive 1987 sci-fi B movie with Kyle MacLachlan? It’s about an alien organism of maximum hostility and violence that can transfer itself from one human host to another, each time discarding the previous used-up host-corpse. And it never dies: it just reappears in another guise.
This reminds me a great deal of St Vincent, Bill Murray’s brand-new old-codger movie. The story of a kid named Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) and his newly divorced mother (Melissa McCarthy) who move in next door to a grouchy old alcoholic and degenerate gambler (that’ll be Bill), it is the umpteenth retread of a venerable and creaky Hollywood standard that reboots itself incessantly in ever-changing forms. Take As Good As It Gets (now there’s a movie I loathe). In that version – hardly the first – Jack Nicholson essayed the cootish role opposite Helen Hunt’s ingenue waitress, and when that host-actor was all used-up, the organism reappeared elsewhere, clad in other iconic guises, soon to be shed: as Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa and The Bad News Bears, as Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, and on TV in episodes of King Of The Hill and Modern Family, to name just a couple.This reminds me a great deal of St Vincent, Bill Murray’s brand-new old-codger movie. The story of a kid named Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) and his newly divorced mother (Melissa McCarthy) who move in next door to a grouchy old alcoholic and degenerate gambler (that’ll be Bill), it is the umpteenth retread of a venerable and creaky Hollywood standard that reboots itself incessantly in ever-changing forms. Take As Good As It Gets (now there’s a movie I loathe). In that version – hardly the first – Jack Nicholson essayed the cootish role opposite Helen Hunt’s ingenue waitress, and when that host-actor was all used-up, the organism reappeared elsewhere, clad in other iconic guises, soon to be shed: as Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa and The Bad News Bears, as Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, and on TV in episodes of King Of The Hill and Modern Family, to name just a couple.
St Vincent is the latest manifestation and adds little to the trope beyond Bill Murray and the excellent newcomer Lieberher. This isn’t a stretch for Murray, just a marginally less pleasant, less cool version of his usual zonked-out, wise-ass schtick (which I confess I love and always will), though he is asked to act perhaps 5% harder than usual when he has a stroke and must learn to talk again (it’s remarkable, implausible and annoying how fast he recovers). Commissioned as an ad hoc emergency babysitter for the kid by his hard-working mother, Vincent teaches him to punch out bullies, takes him to bars and the races, shows him how to bet (the kid runs an 800-1 trifecta first time out, a likely story), drinks and smokes unstintingly, and introduces him to his pregnant Russian hooker girlfriend (Naomi Watts, game but miscast), none of which is helpful when Oliver’s dad shows up demanding full custody.St Vincent is the latest manifestation and adds little to the trope beyond Bill Murray and the excellent newcomer Lieberher. This isn’t a stretch for Murray, just a marginally less pleasant, less cool version of his usual zonked-out, wise-ass schtick (which I confess I love and always will), though he is asked to act perhaps 5% harder than usual when he has a stroke and must learn to talk again (it’s remarkable, implausible and annoying how fast he recovers). Commissioned as an ad hoc emergency babysitter for the kid by his hard-working mother, Vincent teaches him to punch out bullies, takes him to bars and the races, shows him how to bet (the kid runs an 800-1 trifecta first time out, a likely story), drinks and smokes unstintingly, and introduces him to his pregnant Russian hooker girlfriend (Naomi Watts, game but miscast), none of which is helpful when Oliver’s dad shows up demanding full custody.
There’s plenty to like in the movie. Lieberher is no sappy brat, he’s a real three-dimensional boy. McCarthy’s harassed, overloaded single mother is as good a piece of acting as I’ve seen this year, proving she has as much control and nuance in a dramatic part as she does in her comedies. Murray tones down those moments where the script oversells, which is wise, because the whole enterprise reeks of a kind of roll-over-and-beg willingness – a desperation, really – to crowd-please and heart-warm to the Weinstein-ian max. St Vincent has been sculpted, cast, soundtracked and sold as pure middlebrow Oscar-bait, in the approved Harvey Scissorhands manner. Something else we’ve seen a million times before…There’s plenty to like in the movie. Lieberher is no sappy brat, he’s a real three-dimensional boy. McCarthy’s harassed, overloaded single mother is as good a piece of acting as I’ve seen this year, proving she has as much control and nuance in a dramatic part as she does in her comedies. Murray tones down those moments where the script oversells, which is wise, because the whole enterprise reeks of a kind of roll-over-and-beg willingness – a desperation, really – to crowd-please and heart-warm to the Weinstein-ian max. St Vincent has been sculpted, cast, soundtracked and sold as pure middlebrow Oscar-bait, in the approved Harvey Scissorhands manner. Something else we’ve seen a million times before…
• Bill Murray interviewed• St Vincent reviewed