Other People **** (2016, Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Bradley Whitford, Zach Woods ) – Movie Review

Jesse Plemons stars as 30-year-old American gay man David, a struggling comedy writer and indeed struggling person, fresh from breaking up with his five-year long-term boyfriend, who returns to his home town of Sacramento, California, to care for his dying mother (Molly Shannon).

David’s dad (Bradley Whitford) remains chilly and aloof, especially about the gay thing. Trying to reconnect with dad isn’t going well, and coping with his loving mother is hard. The work news isn’t good either. David has had some bad years in his fairly short life but this is his worst one. He plans to keep all his bad news from his mom, a sweet school teacher.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you can’t help be moved by this rollercoaster. It’s an overwhelming emotional experience, told in flashback after the death of the mother with the family lying with her on her death bed. The phone rings and the answerphone picks up a careless, uncaring message from a family friend. It’s a comedy moment at the time of tragedy. I said you’ll laugh, you’ll cry. We get back to it at the end. It’s still the same. The mother has died, but everyone has slightly moved on.

Plemons looks dazed and confused, not fully engaged some of the time as his way of getting through, then sparking up into being present again, exactly right for his character. He also looks like a young Philip Seymour Hoffman, and he could even prove as good an actor. Anyway, he’s great. Shannon, a comedy actress prone to wild performances, plays it straight and sincere, and she’s great.

Whitford is chilly and aloof. It’s an ungrateful part but he gets it. June Squibb and Paul Dooley contribute such warm cameos as gran and grandpa, it’s a real shame they don’t have more to do. It’s also a shame the movie’s title is weak and generic, but nothing is perfect.

Writer and director Chris Kelly steps extremely carefully and adroitly in a minefield, but all the effort he must have put in to it doesn’t show. He is an Emmy-nominated supervising writer at Saturday Night Live and a consulting producer on Comedy Central’s Broad City.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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