Crimes and Misdemeanors

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS             A                    

USA  (107 mi)  1989  d  Woody Allen

I think I see a cab.  If we run quickly we can kick the crutch from that old lady and get it.

―Clifford Stern (Woody Allen)

The 80’s was a particularly good decade for Allen, arguably his best, with films like Stardust Memories (1980),  A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), ZELIG (1983), my own personal favorite Broadway Danny Rose (1984), THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), RADIO DAYS (1987), SEPTEMBER (1987), and ANOTHER WOMAN (1988), a time when he discovered the incomparable Mia Farrow, making this their 9th of 13 films working together, mirror images of one other with all their pent-up anxiety and inner turmoil, ending the decade with this film, doing away with the feel good Hollywood ending, where the edgier, more pessimistic tone was a direct response to Allen’s feelings that he had been too “nice” to the characters at the end of Hannah and Her Sisters, though arguably this may be his most openly Jewish effort, much like the Coen Brothers’ film A Serious Man (2009), as each is a journey that attempts to fathom the essence of their Jewish soul.  While some of the basic ideas for the film were stolen outright by Noah Baumbach in While We're Young (2015), a film that attempts to deal with the overall ethics and moral responsibilities of artists, it was Allen who was the original trailblazer, paying homage to Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Bergman among others, but the film is so undeniably and uniquely Allen that it could not have been made by any other director.  According to Roger Ebert in his 1989 review, Crimes and Misdemeanors - Roger Ebert , “Who else but Woody Allen could make a movie in which virtue is punished, evildoing is rewarded, and there is a lot of laughter ― even subversive laughter at the most shocking times?”  Since Dostoyevsky’s title was already taken, this is Allen’s flipside to Crime and Punishment, a moralistic film that searches for meaning throughout, guided by God, religious teachings, and the lessons of philosophers, only to discover this can all be thrown out the window for people of wealth and privilege, where ultimately the laws of God do not apply to them.  Money apparently offers them divine privilege and protection for their crimes, as after a brief period of agonizing guilt afterwards, the feeling dissipates and the man’s conscience can be clear, no longer feeling the slightest tinge of guilt, literally getting away with murder.  At its most outlandish, it asks what would the world look like today had the Nazi’s won?  Jews that survived the Holocaust have a unique relationship with God, perhaps best expressed by Elie Wiesel in his book Night, his personal take on surviving Auschwitz as a child while watching his entire family and nearly everyone else around him die.  A devout religious student as a child, throughout the ordeal he kept asking himself, where was God at Auschwitz?  How could he allow that to happen?  Apparently these same kinds of questions haunted Allen as a child, where this film represents a seemingly futile search for faith in the moral wasteland represented by the Reagan years (1981 – 89).   

       

According to David Evanier from the Jewish Book Council, January 28, 2014, David Evanier on Woody Allen's references to his Jewish ...  

   

Woody Allen became a comedy star at a time when every preconception about American life came into question. He entered a social milieu that somehow was waiting for and anticipating him. He was the antithesis of the traditional male hero: the archetypal schlemiel with a whining, high voice. His humor was very personal and unique; it was not interchangeable with other comedians. There was a presumption, whether it was true or not, that he was telling you something more personal and autobiographical about himself and his experiences.

It almost strains credulity that a Jewish comedian and film actor who placed his Jewishness front and center and consciously proclaimed it, utilizing constant references to his Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust, and with ambivalent ways of defining gentiles (white bread and mayonnaise were the most popular reference) could capture the imagination of and even beguile a huge audience as Woody Allen has done. Jack Benny, George Burns, Eddie Cantor, and Groucho Marx preceded him, but these were not comics advertising their Jewishness; it was implicit and polite. Borscht-belt comics were open about their ethnicities by the 1950s, but they were entertaining largely Jewish audiences. Allen was a national comic from the start.

Allen’s boyhood was lived during the Holocaust from afar and he is obsessed with it. He wrote in Tikkun of his rage when reading Elie Wiesel’s Night: “Wiesel made the point several times that the inmates of the camps didn’t think of revenge. I find it odd that I, who was a small boy during World War Two and who lived in America, unmindful of any of the horrors Nazi victims were undergoing, and who never missed a good meal with meat and a warm bed to sleep in at night, and whose memories of those years are only blissful and full of good times and good music—that I think of nothing but revenge.”

The film wastes no time getting right into the heart of the action, as within minutes, Martin Landau as Judah Rosenthal is immediately identified as a “guilty man,” like a villain in a Hitchcock film, intercepting and reading aloud to himself a letter intended for his wife from his mistress of several years, airline stewardess Dolores Paley (Anjelica Huston), where she’s fed up with hiding and being alone and is ready to expose it all, which puts Judah in a precarious position, where much of this film is told through brief flashbacks, which act as his conscience, where he sees his life passing before his eyes.  As a successful ophthalmologist and a pillar of the community, this revelation could demoralize his wife Miriam (Claire Bloom), who enjoys the privileges of being married to a successful partner and upset the stability of a loving family, as both parents are adored by their daughter Sharon (Stephanie Roth Haberle) and her fiancé Chris (Greg Edelman).  All this could be ruined if word gets out.  And there’s charges of embezzling as well?  The central dilemma is Rosenthal goes on a panicked tailspin, still trying to smooth things over with Dolores, who won’t give up easily, as she wants what’s been promised to her.  Anjelica Huston plays totally against type here, as she’s usually a strong, dominant character, but here she’s a long-suffering woman who’s continually been taken advantage of, who is reduced to nervous exhaustion in his presence, and grows neurotically angry and insecure in his absence.  Each of the scenes they play together is a flurry of heated emotions, where Rosenthal is concerned that the dam is about to break.  Alternating with Rosenthal’s ugly dilemma is the plight of a relatively unknown documentary filmmaker Clifford Stern (Woody Allen), something of a sad sack character who is involved in a loveless marriage with his wife Wendy (Joanna Gleason), where they haven’t had sex in a year (The last time I was inside a woman was when I was in the Statue of Liberty,” he quips), where the only satisfaction he receives out of life is taking his young niece to matinee revival movie houses, where clips from old movies have a hilarious way of commenting on the present, much like Rosenthal’s flashback episodes.  Cliff has discovered an aging intellectual, Professor Louis Levy, to be the subject of a film he’s been working on for some time but has yet to complete it.  Interestingly, Levy is played by Martin Bergmann, known personally as a friend and therapist by Allen, a clinical professor of psychology in New York University’s post-doctoral program, though his character appears to have been based on Primo Levy, Italian writer, essayist and Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz.  Once again, Allen uses Levy’s eloquent speeches as if summoning up the voice of conscience.  In the opening moments, we hear Judah’s conscience speaking during a testimonial dinner speech honoring his generous philanthropy.

I remember my father telling me, “The eyes of God are on us always.”  The eyes of God.  What a phrase to a young boy. What were God’s eyes like?  Unimaginably penetrating, intense eyes, I assumed.  And I wonder if it was just a coincidence I made my specialty ophthalmology.

This is a film with plenty of one-liner zingers, like the Woody of old, where we appreciate the comic wit of this man, who is like an encyclopedia of Jewish humor going back to the vaudeville era when comedians had to suffer through the catcalls and boos of an audience that impatiently waited for the next girlie act to show up, yet by the end of the film Woody’s character is in abject despair.  An interesting counterpoint throughout is the use of vintage jazz music that sounds so upbeat and happy.  Allen’s nemesis is his wife’s highly accomplished and extremely successful brother, Lester, Alan Alda, introduced with Darryl Hannah on his arm in an uncredited cameo, a multi-millionaire TV producer who’s also something of a narcissistic egomaniac in the mold of Donald Trump, where he has to constantly be the center of attention, which irks Cliff to no end, as he can’t get anyone to pay attention to him or his films.  In reality, Allen loved Alda’s improvisational style and asked him for more, greatly expanding the role, which Allen wrote as they were filming, where his personality was supposedly based on comedy writer Larry Gelbart.  As a favor to Wendy, Lester agrees to hire Cliff, who’s forced to abandon his principles (a vow of poverty, apparently) by agreeing to film a documentary on the life of Lester for a great deal of money, where he meets one of the producers on the set, Hallie (Mia Farrow), as she fends off a series of romantic attempts by Lester.  Hoping to find a fellow comrade in arms in the war against Lester, they quickly become an alliance of two, where Hallie shows interest in his documentary, suggesting it could run in the fall television campaign, and of course they play hooky on Lester by attending old vintage matinee movies, where Cliff falls madly in love, though for Hallie it’s more of a budding friendship with a business acquaintance.  Meanwhile, Judah is eating himself alive and confesses his infidelity through the confidentially of one of his patients, Ben (Sam Waterston), a rabbi that is going blind, who urges him to come clean with his wife and hope for forgiveness, “It’s a fundamental difference in the way we view the world.  You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless, and I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure with real meaning, and forgiveness, and some kind of higher power.  Otherwise there’s no basis to know how to live,” while also having flashbacks of his own father Sol (David S. Howard) at temple, instructing him as a young child, “The eyes of God see all.  Listen to me Judah, there is absolutely nothing that escapes his sight.  He sees the righteous and He sees the wicked, and the righteous will be rewarded, but the wicked will be punished for eternity.”  In one of the more memorable flashbacks, at a family Passover dinner, where Sol again claims “God will punish the wicked,” his more feisty and radical sister May (Anna Berger) reminds Sol that Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews and got away with it.  With all of this gnawing away inside his soul, Judah calls on the aid of his brother Jack, the more down to earth Jerry Orbach, who has sinister underworld connections, afraid of what he’s doing but he’s desperate to stop Dolores or he’ll be ruined, so he instructs Jack to “take care of it.”  Those few words set in motion a most foul deed, to which the agonized Judah responds when it’s over, “God have mercy on us, Jack.”         

Beautifully edited in a gorgeous symmetrical design, where each sequence is quick, establishes itself, and moves on to another, creating a fluidity of character and ideas that continually spark interest, making terrific use of old movie clips, all tying the past into the present, the film is listed at #3, behind Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979) at #1 from an October 4, 2013 Guardian Poll, "The 10 best Woody Allen films".  Interesting that gas was only $1.03/gallon when this film was made, also that Allen uses Judah’s favorite composer to accentuate the fragmented thoughts and jarring darkness of his actions, setting the murder motif to a Schubert String Quartet in G major, Op. 161, D.887, 1st movement by the Julliard String Quartet, 1.Franz Schubert D. 887 Last Quartet No. 15 in G major I ... YouTube (10:00), followed by a quick edit to an amusing film clip of “Murder He Says” from HAPPY GO LUCKY (1943), Betty Hutton -- Murder, He Says - YouTube (2:51).  While Cliff is supposed to be painting a flattering portrait of such a successful, larger-than-life man, instead he focuses on how he perceives Lester, like the belligerent manner that he treats his staff, repeatedly showing his gargantuan ego and tyrannical rage, edited next to archival footage of Mussolini delivering an animated speech to the cheering throngs, but apparently he goes too far with footage of Lester privately cornering women with sexual advances, which promptly gets him fired.  “What is the guy so upset about?  You’d think nobody was ever compared to Mussolini before.”  But perhaps even more deflating, he receives news that Professor Levy committed suicide, leaving behind a note that simply said, “I’ve gone out the window.”  Cliff is beside himself in disbelief, claiming “When I grew up in Brooklyn nobody committed suicide.  Everyone was too unhappy.”  Hallie explains they could never use his film after this event, but in real life it matches what happened to Primo Levy, who committed suicide in 1987 at the age of 67, which likely had a major impact on this film, much like the use of Bruno Bettelheim’s appearance in ZELIG (1983), another Holocaust survivor that committed suicide by asphyxiation a year after this film was released.  Continuing the downward spiral, Hallie is leaving for work in London for 3 or 4 months, leaving Cliff feeling like he’s been abandoned and handed a prison sentence.  Cut to a shot of Alcatraz and clips from the film 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING (1932), as months, months, months pass by before the film jumps ahead 4 months later to a wedding reception (at the Waldorf Astoria) for the daughter of Ben, the now completely blind rabbi, where Wendy and Cliff are finally getting divorced, but Cliff is even more devastated over his worst fear realized, as Hallie and Lester arrive to the party happy and engaged.  Hallie quietly returns his one love letter, “It’s probably just as well.  I plagiarized most of it from James Joyce.  You probably wondered why all the references to Dublin,” leaving Cliff alone and in despair, sitting away from the party having a drink, where he is joined by Judah in a chance encounter, hearing that he’s a movie guy, pitching his “fictionalized” idea of a chilling murder for a movie, one where the guy actually gets away with it.   

And after the awful deed is done, he finds that he’s plagued by deep-rooted guilt. Little sparks of his religious background which he’d rejected are suddenly stirred up. He hears his father’s voice. He imagines that God is watching his every move. Suddenly, it’s not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one, and he’s violated it. Now, he’s panic-stricken. He’s on the verge of a mental collapse-an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police. And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe and as the months pass, he finds he’s not punished. In fact, he prospers. The killing gets attributed to another person―a drifter who has a number of other murders to his credit, so I mean, what the hell? One more doesn’t even matter. Now he’s scot-free. His life is completely back to normal.  Back to his protected world of wealth and privilege.

However it is Professor Levy speaking from the grave who gets the last word, spoken over the jazzy refrains of “I’ll Be Seeing You”:

We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions.  Moral choices.  Some are on a grand scale.  Most of these choices are on lesser points.  But!  We define ourselves by the choices we have made.  We are in fact the sum total of our choices.  Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included, in the design of creation.  It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe.  And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.

Movie Clips used in the film

20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)

The Last Gangster (1937)

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

This Gun for Hire (1942)

Happy Go Lucky (1943)

Francis (1950)

Into the Woods (1991)

INTO THE WOODS – made for TV, PBS American Playhouse          B              
USA  (153 mi)  1991  d:  James Lapine

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.        —The Prince (Robert Westerberg)

One of the most endearing of all Stephen Sondheim musicals, a magical experience largely because of its universal accessibility, one that pokes fun of children’s fairy tales, imagining them with different outcomes than ending happily ever after, premiering on Broadway on November 5, 1987.  Divided into two halves, separated by an Intermission, the first half fits the audiences expectations by ingeniously combining several classic fairy tales, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk, with a sarcastic narrator (Tom Aldredge) dressed in a suit visibly seen standing off to the side of the stage advancing the stories with a polished relish, while in the second half, when the familiar suddenly turns unrecognizable, elements of death and stark realism are added, where the story grows darker with a chilling despair that haunts the surviving characters, suddenly cut off from their families and homes, left to fend for themselves in a changing world.  Music and lyrics by Sondheim, with a clever story written by James Lapine, the production won three Tony Awards, Best Score, Best Book (Story), and Best Actress in a Musical (Joanna Gleason as the Baker’s wife, whose deadpan timing is a joy to behold) in a year dominated by The Phantom of the Opera, winner of seven Tony awards, becoming the longest running Broadway show in history.  Collaborating with Lapine, the writer has a taste for visually oriented theater, where their first musical together about pointillist painter Georges Seurat was Sunday in the Park with George, in 1984, winning two Tony awards for design, while Sondheim and Lapine won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  Lapine also directs the film, attempting to recreate the Broadway experience by simply filming a performance in front of a live audience, but the suffocatingly narrow and confined limitations of a fixed camera with a zoom lens moving in and out, but not panning from side to side (where interestingly the stage moves instead of the camera), prevents an overall view of depth and breadth of the entire stage, losing much of the three dimensional aspects of movement, as there are plenty of scene changes within a scene, often losing connection with characters, where the visual effect throughout is everything feels flattened out.  This is the same problem with filming operas (appearing regularly in movie theaters nowadays), where these specific theatrical performances were meant to be experienced live in theaters where the sound reverberates throughout the music hall. 

Ostensibly a story about a childless Baker (Chip Zien) and his wife (Gleason) and their magical quest to begin a family, fighting off a curse placed upon them years ago by an ugly Witch (Bernadette Peters, a delight in one of her best roles), who has herself been cursed, collecting several items the Witch demands to reverse the curse while interacting with other storybook characters throughout the journey.  With music tying all these elements together, the opening sequence of heading “Into the Woods” draws in many of the featured characters, including Little Red Riding Hood (Danielle Ferland, who ultimately becomes knife-wielding and cynical) snatching as many cookies as she can grab in the bakery before she’s off to her grandmother’s house, a somewhat dimwitted neighbor Jack (Ben Wright) who through impoverished circumstances is forced by his mother to take his best friend, a cow named Milky White (an inanimate object), to the market for money, while Cinderella (Kim Crosby) is seen fleeing through the woods wearing slippers of gold while escaping from the Prince (Robert Westerberg, who doubles as the wolf, and after meeting on the set ironically goes on to marry Cinderella/Kim Crosby in real life afterwards) after the luxurious ball, a recurring event that happens on each of three consecutive nights.  The First Act plays out like a delightful run-on sentence, continually getting carried away with one idea, which overlaps into another, and another, creating waves of interconnecting sequences that are humorously developed through complicated musical lyrics that are given the Sondheim touch, where he is a master of cleverly crafting music and lyrics specifically tailored to the characters and situations within his musicals.  Perhaps setting the absurdly ridiculous tone for the story is one of the more memorable musical numbers, a duet of dueling princes in “Agony,” Into the Woods - "Agony" - YouTube (2:39), one (Chuck Wagner) who can’t fathom how to steal away Rapunzel locked in her tall tower with no doors and the other whose fair maiden keeps eluding his grasp at the ball, something he finds unthinkable, where he attributes it to “madness,” each an exaggerated caricature of what a Prince Charming is supposed to be, yet each bemoaning the opposition they encounter as if it were a fate worse than death.  But that’s only a prelude for worse catastrophes yet to come.  When the Witch discovers the Prince has romantic inclinations with Rapunzel, she begs her daughter not to leave her, as the world outside is filled with trouble and heartache, "Stay with Me" - Into The Woods (1991 ... - YouTube (2:46), becoming one of the best songs ever written about parental loss.  When Rapunzel refuses, however, the Witch angrily blinds the Prince, cuts off Rapunzel's hair and banishes her to the desert. 

Part of the beauty of the play is how well the audience is initially comforted by the opening act, where everyone finds what they’re looking for, as the Bakers have a child, the Witch has regained her beauty, Cinderella has married the Prince and lives in a castle, Little Red Riding Hood has defeated the Wolf, and Jack and his mother are no longer poor, as the magic beans received for the cow have brought them riches, where “once upon a time” has led to “happily ever after” and all is seemingly right with the world.  At the Intermission, audiences are likely to be smiling.  But the second act literally transforms the play, as something devilishly clever aspires to something even greater, where simply following one’s customary storybook destiny without having to make difficult choices is not in the cards, as that is not how life works.  Despite achieving what they set out to, everyone seems happy on the outside, but underneath they all still yearn for something more, where the Bakers fret about not having enough room for a new family, while Cinderella may actually be growing bored with the Prince, and Rapunzel, despite being freed from the tower, wanders aimlessly in the desert, where her blind Prince somehow finds her there, regaining his sight from her tears and marries her on the spot, but she’s grown hysterical.  Both Prince Charmings continue to romance other women, betraying their wives in the process, but this is all they know.  While Jack initially chopped down the beanstalk, leaving a Giant dead in their backyard, a new Giant is detected from another beanstalk, a Lady Giant who’s fuming over the loss of her husband and wants the child responsible handed over to her.  In her wrath, she destroys the castle, steps on Grandmother’s house, and causes the death of the Baker’s wife.  In regaining her beauty, the Witch has lost her powers to defend against such a formidable creature, singing the “Last Midnight” in their darkest hour, leaving them seemingly at the mercy of the Lady Giant, many having lost their homes and their loved ones.  This heartache and tragedy is reflected in one of Sondheim’s greatest songs, “No One Is Alone,” where Cinderella comforts Little Red Riding Hood while the Baker consoles Jack after he’s lost his mother, trying to keep his anger from swelling up into vengeance.  In the end only a few survive, but they are visited by the spirits of the ones they lost, where the Witch, of all people, delivers the moral of the story, singing one of the most beautifully heartfelt songs, “Children Will Listen,” before they all collectively return to the introductory main theme song, “Into the Woods.”  These complex characterizations are the heart of the story, as Sondheim brings the unfamiliar into the familiar, where this is one of his more audience pleasing and ingeniously created works.  By the end, we feel intimately connected to the characters, mixing comic wit, savage satire, and pure tragedy into their otherwise fortuitous lives, bringing them to the edge of the apocalypse where their world, as they and we in the audience know it, is completely destroyed and they must find a new way to survive outside the safely protected confines of fairy tales and illusion. 

The Skeleton Twins

THE SKELETON TWINS        C+            
USA  (93 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Craig Johnson            Official site

One of the more acclaimed films to come out of Sundance, winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, yet despite the darkness of the subject matter, suicide turned into a morbid comedy, the film is surprisingly conventional.  While this was an opportunity to create something uniquely original, instead it’s more than slightly contrived, filled with movie cliché’s and a truly terrible musical soundtrack that just screams of indie light with a peppy beat, feeling nearly identical to the musical track used in Jason Reitman’s UP IN THE AIR (2009), in both cases used to add a surge of folksy energy to an otherwise downbeat subject, but the music couldn’t feel more generic.  Certainly that’s part of the problem, but the story itself also has a condescending air about it in the derisive and mocking style of humor used, where everybody else is fair game to be made fun of, calling kids of today “little shits,” while in the same breath making a film about two bratty grown up children who both feel unloved and unlovable, where many of the viewers will sympathize, even as these shortsighted characters don’t really give a damn about anybody else.  Much like Bud Cort’s stream of comic suicide attempts in HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971) or Lone Scherfig’s offbeat WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF (2002), there’s a fine line between tragedy and comedy, where the better films err on the side of tragedy, while the more mainstream films err on the side of comedy, which is the case here, as the comedic aspects are delightfully entertaining, though resembling the absurdist tone of comic sketches, while the more tragic, downbeat moments never really work, likely due to the fact that the lives of the two lead characters feel more like fragments and are never truly explored.  The viewer only sees what the writer wants them to see, where there isn’t an underlying reservoir of hidden, untapped emotions, which is the essential component on display throughout the nearly three-hour The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (2014). 

Bought up at Sundance and distributed by the Duplass brothers, the story concerns a twin brother and sister, Milo (Bill Hader) and Maggie (Kristen Wiig, though originally the part was conceived with Ana Faris in mind), both alums from the Saturday Night Live (1975 – present) television series and both the product of a dysfunctional family.  While a series of flashbacks briefly explores their childhood, it’s used more for symbolic connections than to provide any real insight, as the focus remains thoroughly targeted on the present, where both are miserably unhappy, and as twins seem to be on the same psychic wavelength, as both are seen at the outset on the verge of committing suicide at exactly the same moment, though they haven’t seen one another in ten years.  Maggie is stopped from taking a handful of pills by an interrupting phone call from an emergency room announcing her brother survived his failed attempt of cutting his wrists in the bathtub.  Flying out ot LA to offer her support, Milo grumbles a spew of sarcastic venom at her and tells her to go away, but she refuses to listen and instead invites him to her small New York hometown where she lives with her husband Lance (Luke Wilson), giving her an opportunity to look after him.  Having no better offers, of course he accepts, but immediately he’s the odd man out, as Lance is a testosterone positive alpha male who is hyper positive about everything, where he acts like he’s perpetually stoned on Zoloft.  Milo, on the other hand, is a sullen, deeply depressive gay man who hides his emotions in self-deprecating sarcasm that is too dark for most people to figure out, leaving him perpetually isolated and alone.  Maggie seems like she’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, but feigns happiness, matching the mood of her constantly upbeat husband, thankful that she’s not living with the pathetic losers that describe her earlier life.  Milo, of course, sees through this in a second, but remains totally out of place, as evidenced by his total frustration at going to a gay bar where he keeps waiting for the men to show up, only to learn it’s “dyke night.” 

While Milo is a head case, wearing his troubles on his sleeve, where an even darker side is hinted at, the audience accepts his psychic turmoil, aggravated further by a contentious relationship with a former English teacher, Rich (Ty Burrell), who is nearby that has trouble written all over it.  Meanwhile, Maggie remains cheerful enough, but that smile is quickly wiped off her face when she’s forced to admit some hard truths to her brother, both high on nitrous oxide at the time, so she couldn’t lie her way out of it as she was attempting to do with her husband, where her façade of happiness reveals as much interior dysfunction as Milo, but she’s better at covering it up.  His presence seems to bring out her most protected secrets, which becomes something of a combustible problem that could easily blow up in her face.  It turns out these secrets are doorways to miserable childhoods and unending emotional pain that have been with them their entire lives, which they’ve both on their own unsuccessfully tried to avoid dealing with.  Neither has any social life to speak of, where their lives are a wreck, so being together has a strange way of releasing pent up memories, allowing them to share experiences that only they know about, which is entirely believable, as it’s clear the two of them have a chemistry from working together.  Painful to watch at times, the film attempts to provide a comic perspective on such assorted themes of suicide, the aftereffects of parental suicide, adultery, serial lying, dysfunctional parenting, sexual abuse of a minor, depression, drug use, and even animal cruelty, where it’s kind of a combination plate of social ills.  When their mother (Joanna Gleason) arrives on the scene, what follows is a descent into ever more disturbing territory.  At one of the bleakest points of despair, Milo breaks out into what appears to be a song and dance routine they performed together as kids, lip-synching to Jefferson Starship’s synth-heavy song for the 80’s, Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now - YouTube (4:32), which couldn’t be more corny, but it’s the moment that seals the deal, as if they have nothing else, they have each other.  While we’ve seen and heard all this before, there are some affecting moments, but overall the film never digs deep enough to actually matter, where the ideas and the performances are eventually lost to the mediocre execution.