Goodrich: Mr. Mom Now Mr. Grandma-To-Be in Well-Meaning Dramedy
But in that slapstick comedy, his situation was predicated by his wife finding a job. Here the plot is set in motion when the wife checks herself into rehab. You know that old saw about comedy being tragedy plus time? It turns out the reverse is also true!
Not that Goodrich is a full-on drama. There are moment of humour and levity, many of them thanks to Andy Goodrich’s two fourth-grade kids, who have that movie habit of being preternaturally wise and speaking like pint-sized screenwriters and not actual children. But in their defence, they do live in L.A.
Andy also has an adult child, Grace (Mila Kunis) from an earlier marriage to Anne. (This ex-wife is played by Andie MacDowell, whose single brief scene suggests the producers blew their budget on Keaton and could only afford her for one afternoon.) Grace is herself pregnant with her first child, and clearly still smarting from Andy’s haphazard fathering all those years ago, and his continued semi-absence in her life.
But everything changes when Andy’s current wife, Naomi (Laura Benanti, mostly a voice on the phone) goes into a 90-day rehab treatment, and further announces that she’s leaving him. Andy is suddenly making lunches and shuffling the kids off to school, even as he tries to mend fences with Grace.
Oh, and the gallery he owns (more like Mr. Monet, am I right?) is in dire financial straits, though if he can just land that one big client (Carmen Ejogo) he may be able to Jerry Maguire his way back into solvency. But at what cost to his family happiness?
Goodrich (ugh, that name; we get it!) tries mightily to make good with everyone around him, but he’s clearly stretching himself thin. Writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer signals this by having him confuse his two daughters in far too many pivotal scenes. (Ugh, he mixes up their names; we get it!)
Speaking of names, if Meyers-Shyer’s sounds familiar, that’s because she’s the daughter of filmmakers Nancy Meyers (The Parent Trap, The Holiday) and Charles Shyer (Irreconcilable Differences, Father of the Bride).
Read our interview with Hallie Meyers-Shyer
Meyers-Shyer only has one previous writing-directing credit to her name, the underwhelming 2017 romcom Home Again, starring Reese Witherspoon. In that one she leaned heavily on her film-brat background, a mistake she’s mostly rectified this time, although she does make Andy’s new gay best friend and fellow single dad a struggling actor, played by Michael Urie.
The scenes that work best, however, are those between Ejogo and Keaton, as he tries to woo the skittish and grieving daughter of a recently deceased art icon, anxious to close the deal but also clearly enamoured of her mother’s art and life.
He may not be the most attentive father or husband, but he’s no huckster. The film, alas, feels far more emotionally conniving than its title character.
Goodrich. Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer. Starring Michael Keaton, Carmen Ejogo, and Mila Kunis. In theatres October 18.