Fourth of July: Louis C.K. Quietly Returns to Directing With a 'Safe' Dysfunctional Family Tale
By Jim Slotek
Rating: C
When things went #MeToo for Louis C.K. in 2017, he was at the Toronto International Film Festival, and he had a big directorial coming out party to promote. Emphasis on “had.”
I Love You, Daddy, in which he played a Hollywood TV producer trying to come to grips with the attention paid to his teenaged daughter (Chloë Grace Moretz) by a lascivious legendary director (John Malkovich).
But as accusations broke mid-festival of lurid sexual behavior in front of women he worked with, the distributors let go of the film as if it were radioactive. It would be treated less as a work of cinema and more as character evidence. The optics of this provocative, morally sketchy comedy didn’t help his cause.
Jeff (Joe List, left) watches his family go into “beast mode” in Fourth of July.
Had it been reviewed on its own terms, people would have noticed that I Love You, Daddy was very much a slavish homage, both in theme and style, to Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
Five years later, C.K. is back with another directorial effort, one which no one could possibly object to, but which is also kind of soft as a result.
Fourth of July begins on a note that suggests his Woody worship continues unabated. We meet Jeff (co-writer Joe List), a neurotic New York jazz pianist and reformed alcoholic who has repeated delusions that he’s backed up his car over pedestrians who’ve run away before he could help them. His wife Beth (Sarah Tollemache) wants a baby, but his own self-loathing gets in the way. Even his analyst (Louis C.K. in an, I’m guessing, deliberately small role) is tired of his problems.
The first act plays out like a minor Woody Allen movie, with the city playing the part of stark mood-setter. But that all changes when Jeff decides to use the occasion of his dysfunctional family’s annual get together in Maine for the Fourth of July to throw his traumatic childhood at their feet.
Taking the story to the seaside changes the vibe, and takes us to a much louder environment amid a family of hard drinkers, racist jokes and hardened feelings. There are two macho louts, Uncle Kevin (Nick Di Paolo) and an in-law Tony (Tony Viveiros), who are like high school bullies with beer bellies. And the control-freakish mom (Paula Plum) can barely bring herself to hug her son, even as an act of obligation.
The most interesting portrayal in the movie is arguably the dad (Robert Walsh), towards whom Jeff holds the most resentment for withholding his love. Though given only a handful of terse lines of dialogue, the dad’s face has a quiet and moving suffering quality. His own father (Richard O'Rourke) is along for the visit and every realization of his own paternal failings causes him to gaze at grandpa with thoughts we can only imagine.
An interesting addition to the cast of characters is Naomi (Tara Pacheco), a recently widowed young black woman who is a friend of one of the cousins. At first, her purpose as a character seems to be to further inflame the ignorance of the banter. But as Jeff lashes out and becomes the family pariah (even more an object of cruel humour than he was before), Naomi becomes a sounding board, and a witness to the fact that Jeff isn’t imagining this family madness.
The movie runs just more than 90 minutes, and it carries enough psychological baggage to keep an analyst busy for years. But as time runs out in the third act, C.K. decides (or needs) to wrap things up faster than either Drs. Oz and Phil. Healing happens. Hardened attitudes soften. It’s as if somebody slipped Ecstasy in their beers.
Fourth of July is meant to be a comedy, but isn’t in the sense that there is nothing funny enough to laugh at. It is a domestic car crash with no edge or purpose. As a vehicle to quietly put Louis C.K. back on the filmmaking radar, it serves nicely. But ironically, in a movie about withholding, it holds back much.
Fourth of July. Directed by Louis C.K. Written by Louis C.K. and Joe List. Stars Joe List, Sarah Tollemache and Tara Pacheco. Opens in theatres Friday, July 8.