OCTOBER 19, 2017
I never thought that I would write this sentence, but Adam Sander gives one of the year’s very best performances in Noah Baumbach’s latest film “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” which is currently streaming on Netflix. Sandler plays Danny Meyerowitz, one of three children of the famed sculptor Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman). Danny is kind of a fuckup, but he’s a good father to his daughter Eliza (Grace Van Patten), who is about to go to college.
In anticipation of a group show in which his father’s work will be displayed, Danny joins his brother, West Coast financier Matthew (Ben Stiller) and his morose sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) in supporting their dad. Harold is difficult (and Hoffman’s performance, one of his best in the past decade, makes sure of that) in a way that keeps the audience from identifying with him. But, thanks to Hoffman, we still like him.
The best of Baumbach’s films, such as 2005’s “The Squid and the Whale,” deal with families, and the family here is one of his most fascinating with which Baumbach has ever dealt. We have not only a difficult patriarch, but his current (and fourth) wife, the tipsy Maureen (Emma Thompson) and his third wife (and Matthew’s mother) Julia (Candice Bergen) are as colorful figures as you might expect from a family like this.
“The Meyerowitz Stories” is not a beginning/middle/end kind of narrative but is instead a slice out of a portion of this family’s life when Harold, who probably thinks that he’s a more important artist than he really is, is preparing for a retrospective group show (which insults him because he believes he deserves his own separate retrospective).
As Harold, Hoffman delivers an Oscar nomination-worthy performance, probably his best in the last decade. His Harold is justifiably proud of his work (probably too much so) but knows deep down inside that he has failed as a father and as a husband but is much too proud to admit it.
Thompson (whom I barely recognized) and Bergen are terrific, as is Judd Hirsch as a much more successful artistic colleague of Harold’s, although he would be hesitant to admit it. Plus Van Patten, whom I could watch all day in her father/daughter interactions with Sandler, is wonderful as well.
But the emotional core of “The Meyerowitz Stories” is the relationship between brothers Danny and Matthew. Stiller is really good — it’s a business guy performance that we’ve seen from Stiller before, but he’s expert in pulling it off.
The major revelation from “The Meyerowitz Stories,” however, is Adam Sandler. If he didn’t bring his goofball baggage to this film, I think we would be heralding him as a major acting discovery. Seriously, he’s that good. His Danny and is someone who is homeless and between jobs who knows that, when Harold is hospitalized and Matthew returns to his home in L.A., he will be the one who is left to pick up the pieces and care for his ailing father. It’s a terrific performance by Sandler and one which, though it’s likely not to get it, deserves huge critical praise.
If you live in New York, L.A. or another major city, “The Meyerowitz Stories” may be playing at a theater near you. But if you subscribe to Netflix, it’s available to you in the comfort of your easy chair. Give it a shot — it’s one of the year’s better films.
GRADE: B+
