Movie Review: 'The Meddler'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Susan Sarandon is an acting treasure.
Oh, her movies certainly haven't all been gems – after all, how could they be when she's made over 100? – but her particular and reliable excellence we take very much for granted.
But perhaps all we really need to know about Sarandon is that she owns one Academy Award – for Best Actress in 1995's Dead Man Walking – and four additional
Best Actress Oscar nominations, for Atlantic City (1980), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992) , and The Client (1994). To say nothing of her beloved and iconic character in 1988's Bull Durham.
Of course, all that being said, it's also been quite awhile between dips in the Oscar pool.
Hey, not to be meddlesome or anything, but maybe it's time.
The Meddler stars Sarandon as the recently widowed Marnie Minervini, who lost the man who was the love of her life two years ago – although she thinks of it as having happened much more recently than that.
Regardless, she's still in transition, dealing with grief and loneliness simultaneously.
She has turned her relentless attention on her daughter, a television writer played by Rose Byrne, who has her own problems, including a breakup she's going through and a TV pilot she's trying to produce. So she's reluctant to stay in the close contact with her mother that her mother craves.
Marnie even leaves her New Jersey home and follows her daughter to Los Angeles in the hopes of being close to her child so she can stay in just about constant contact with her as she starts a new life.
But respecting boundaries is just not Marnie's style. Not even close.
And if her only daughter isn't interested in her style of mothering – well, let's call it nurturing -- perhaps there are friends of her daughter's or acquaintances of Marnie's who are. After all, widow Marnie does have financial resources to draw on.
If this sounds like a one-dimensional caricature of a controlling mama, it certainly could be in lesser hands. But not the way Sarandon paints her portraits. Her Marnie, who is much more interesting than the title indicates, can be overbearing and annoying – in short, she's often a nag -- even while she's being perky and generous, and Sarandon isn't afraid to show her to us in bothersome lights. But only in moments.
And that's because she works in three figurative dimensions, delivering a thoroughly lived-in character, firmly rooted in reality, as part of the very best kind of 3-D process there is.
Consequently, behavior that might seem cringeworthy on the screenplay page plays, in Sarandon's hands, as, if not charming, then at least understandable and acceptable. And undeniably interesting and even touching.
Writer-director Lorene Scafaria, who made her directorial debut with 2012's Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, offers a sweetly melancholy, semi-autobiographical character study. She has Sarandon in just about every frame, although she gets an appealing and valuable contribution out of J.K. Simmons as a retired cop who works as a security guard on movie sets and represents a romantic possibility for Marnie. But this remains much more of a mother-daughter movie than a movie about replacement romance.
And it's the canny lead actress who gives the film its improbable upbeat charm.
So we'll keep in constant touch with 3 stars out of 4. The Meddler may qualify as an abbreviated and alienating character description, but, as usual, Susan Sarandon wins us over and brings the movie with her as a superior (to Mother's Day) big-screen option for this particular Mother's Day.
