5 Flights Up [Ruth & Alex] *** (2014, Diane Keaton, Morgan Freeman, Cynthia Nixon) – Movie Review

Funny and charming – Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman seem made for each other and share a twinkling screen magic. Cynthia Nixon scores too as their realtor.

Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman play Ruth & Alex, a long-time married couple who’ve spent 40 years together in the same Brooklyn apartment but are now worried they’re 5 Flights Up at the onset of old age.

Cynthia Nixon plays Ruth’s niece, a pushy real-estate agent, who plans to sell their home for them, while they meantime search for somewhere nice to live.

That’s it in Charlie Peters’s screenplay based on Jill Ciment’s novel, in which more or less absolutely nothing happens, a bit like this would be in life, I guess.

I get that Time Out wouldn’t like it – ‘soul-crushingly tedious and incredibly self-satisfied’. You can just see it on the posters! But I found it funny and charming. Two actors who have a lot to be self-satisfied about, Freeman and Keaton, seem made for each other and share a twinkling screen magic. Quite honestly, I’d have been pretty happening listening to them reciting the Brooklyn phone book.

They are both very good indeed, especially Freeman, who turns every eye twitch into an Oscar-seeking moment. Nixon scores too as their tougher-than-she-looks realtor.

There’s a place and a welcome for movies like this as a showcase for older, beloved actors. Cinema doesn’t just have to be for kids only. But they should have left the original title alone. It was just fine. It’s directed discreetly and well by Britain’s Richard Loncraine, who gives us a great view of life in the newly yuppified Brooklyn and taste of the phony and grabby real-estate business in New York.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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