Feelings. Nothing More Than Feelings.

 

C'MON C'MON (D+) - C'mon, indeed. Or more like, come onnnn.

Memo to filmmakers (and reporters and novelists and other storytellers): Children, with rare exceptions, are not interesting. Mike Mills thought otherwise. He was woefully mistaken.

There is precious and then there is the failed experiment in preciousness that is "C'mon C'mon," the story of an obnoxious 9-year-old boy and a logistical quirk that gets treated like the most traumatic experience ever for him, his mother and his uncle. The histrionics here involve the following "crisis." Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) has to leave LA to go baby-sit her estranged or ex-husband who is having a bipolar episode in Oakland, and so she agrees to let her brother Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) baby-sit little precocious mop-haired Jesse (Woody Norman). Luckily these middle-class mopes have the resources to do all this; Johnny takes Jesse on the road to assist with his NPR-like team that goes around interviewing children, beseeching them to enlighten us with their wisdom. One example, asked of kids born after Katrina even happened, is something along the lines of "What causes flooding inside of you?" (Most kids (I hope) would contort their face and respond, "What the fuck are you talking about?") This is a fictitious world in wish no child is ever bad and adults care deeply about their psyches and moods.

Everything here is a misstep. There is barely a story to speak of: Kid hangs out with uncle for a while, they bicker and do kissy-face stuff, and phone his mom a lot to make sure everyone is, you know, okay. There is barely a script. Much of the dialogue seems workshopped or ad-libbed by the three principal actors and often consists to cloying play-acting along the lines of "You are."/"No you are."/"No you are!" Some actual interesting screenwriting comes courtesy of long excerpts from writings that Mills cribs from the likes of photographer Kirsten Johnson and the book "The Wizard of Oz." And then there are the interviews with the kids. It's not clear if these are real kids giving real answers or if they are just awkward untrained actors reading lines; regardless, Phoenix is no Art Linkletter. It's not even a Bill Cosby Jell-O commercial.

Mills shoots in black and white; he probably would have used sepia tones if the studio would have allowed it. He lucks upon the pairing of Hoffmann and Phoenix and then has them talk on the phone or text for almost the whole movie. We get not one but two scenes of Johnny losing track of Jesse in New York City for less than a minute, followed by the requisite "You scared me; don't do that" which leads to another round of a variation on "You are."/"No, you are."/"No, you are!" Ad nauseam.

Jesse behaves like a spoiled brat, but we're supposed to think he is some misunderstood wunderkind with such deep feelings that we couldn't possibly understand the pure hell of a child who wears cutesy pajamas, uses a toothbrush that plays music, and likes to pretend that he's an orphan. (Because, you know, mommy and daddy have Major Issues and split up.) The one time Johnny does raise his voice to the golden boy Johnny is so torn up he has to confess his cardinal sin to Viv. Lots of processing of feelings all around this one.

None of this is as clever as Mills thought it up in his head (or remembers it from his amber-encrusted childhood, if that's the case). Mills had a great run with films like "Thumbsucker," "Beginners" and "20th Century Women" (a truly insightful paean to motherhood). I'd hate to think that his spouse, Miranda July ("Kajillionaire"), has dragged him into the twee zone. "C'mon C'mon" is supposed to be some ode to motherhood and childhood. Save it for your family gatherings.

BONUS TRACK

A bad movie deserves a mockable needle-drop on our title track:

The soundtrack is all over the place. It has arty mood music from Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National and then punky retro tracks like "The Ostrich" by Lou Reeds early band the Primitives:

And we get a fish-out-of-water random sampling of "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" by Irma Thomas: