THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (B+) - If this were the first Noah Baumbach film we had ever seen, we might think it was brilliant. But this deep into his career, Baumbach is trading on his reputation and merely updating previous themes, in particular his wonderful family piece "The Squid and the Whale" from 2005, making this feel like a warmed-over sequel at times.
He also leans on Dustin Hoffman in the patriarch role (handled in "Squid" by a wonderfully neurotic Jeff Daniels), and Hoffman -- dimmed in our regard by tales of decades of piggishness on movie sets -- never finds the right pitch as the haughty artist who has twisted his adult children into knots of doubt and anger. Baumbach does coordinate these offspring -- played by Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler and Elizabeth Marvel -- with expert timing. It's a shame they spend so much of the movie trying to bounce off Hoffman's broad caricature as Harold Meyerowitz, spurned sculptor and largely forgotten instructor at Bard College in the Hudson Valley.
Anger issues are established early on as a Meyerowitz tradition. Scenes often end abruptly in the middle of a tirade, starting in the opening moments with the parking adventures of Danny (Sandler), a failed musician, at the end of a failed marriage, shepherding his teenage daughter off to college. Eliza (Grace Van Patten, a "Sopranos" alum) is the great family hope, heading to Bard to study filmmaking and revive the creative juju of the clan. She makes raunchy short films in which she is often nude and in "sexual situations," to Danny's shock and chagrin. The family rallies around her art, which apparently is another jab at familial delusion, because, from what we get to see, Eliza's films seem pretty crappy. Danny, a pathetic, limping 50-ish shlub, is more directionless than his poised daughter. His claim to fame consists of hokey Tin Pan Alley novelty tunes that only his loved ones know and abide.
Matthew (Stiller), the product of Harold's second marriage (and thus Harold's obvious favorite child), has escaped this dysfunction by moving to the west coast and quashing any pretension of an artistic life by working as a successful financial planner. Despite his exulted status, he has a hair-trigger when dealing with his father, not above shouting grievances at the old man in the middle of the street. Jean (Marvel), meanwhile, is a beaten-down wallflower with a drone-like job who hacks out spoof videos for co-workers. Jean, like Danny a product of the first marriage, wallows in resignation, barely registering a personality, going along with the family shenanigans in a monotone delivery.
Baumbach gets a lot of the details right. Stiller, as the successful financial planner Matthew, is the alpha sibling who is inclined to refer to Danny as his father's other son rather than as his own half-brother. And an awkward conversation between Matthew and Danny -- struggling to bond but having no clue about the fundamental aspects of each others' lives -- stings if you've ever tried that with an estranged sibling. A running gag about the kids' boxes of childhood belongings features an amusing dispute over whether a pair of sunglasses belong to Matthew or Danny. Other lines echo nicely throughout the script, bouncing among the family members (if not wearing out their welcome) as pet phrases are wont to do. (For example, the men are fond of staging nominal "McEnroe protests"; yet more anger issues.) Characters talk past each other as often as they talk to each other.
Conflict arrives in the form of Matthew's plan to convince Harold and his latest mate, a wine-soaked aging hippie named Maureen (a delightfully ditzy Emma Thompson), to cash out their Manhattan apartment as well as his artwork and retire to the countryside. Danny, even though he lived there for only a short time as a teenager, resents Matthew's power play. When Harold ends up in the hospital, with a bleak prognosis, the siblings are tossed together, for better and for worse. They feed off each others' insecurities, especially in the way they all cling to a charge nurse and doctor, both of whom get called away to other duties, thus abandoning Danny, Jean and Matthew like a certain someone they know did long ago.
The cast, aside from Hoffman, settles into a tight rhythm. A few cameos click, too, including Judd Hirsch as Harold's much more successful (and well adjusted) contemporary, L.J.; Rebecca Miller as L.J.'s daughter and a potential love interest (savior) for Danny; and Candice Bergen as Matthew's mother, the aging trophy wife Julia. It's an entertaining world that is created here, albeit an insular east coast one.
The result is a movie that is often merely amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny, but that's not really a criticism; Baumbach is wise to keep the humor low-key. You either know a clan like this -- egotistic, faux creative, delusional, passive-aggressive -- and you get it, or you don't. In the latter case, you might be more annoyed than entertained. Baumbach here is returning to the grievance-based character studies of "Squid," "Margot at the Wedding" and "Greenberg" (where he really clicked with Stiller) and thankfully emerging from the skid that produced the sloppier recent efforts "Mistress America" and "While We're Young."
You get the feeling, though, that this brand is played out, finally. "The Meyerowitz Stories" comes off like a nice little career capper for a director pushing 50. Assuming he's emptied out his notebooks from his family histories, he's poised to begin a new phase of storytelling.
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