And You Think Your Family’s Dysfunctional?
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
😱 HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 😱
(Yes, today's just the eve of All Hallows' Eve, but post I must. Although the real horror show comes next week with the U.S. Presidential election—and associated control of Congress—as roughly half the country will be in mourning, no matter who wins. I’ll see then if I feel like saying anything more.)
The Estate (Dean Craig, 2022) rated R 96 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
It’s normally my policy to only review releases from the current year (unless I’m dipping into the past for something truly special), so it’s time once again for an attempted justification of using something in this posting that was shot and sent to limited theaters in 2022, then released on DVD in 2023. My flimsy rationale is that The Estate has just now come to streaming—free to Netflix subscribers, $3.99 rental on Apple TV+—so that marginally makes it a sort-of-2024 release, especially because it was the one chosen by my viewing companions last Friday over a couple of other less-intriguing choices, even though the OCCU has little good to say about it, with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a miserable 32% even as the usually-lower Metacritic reviewers are a bit (but not impressively) better with a 37% average score. Nevertheless, we all enjoyed it quite a bit, certainly much better than these “noted” critics, so I don’t hesitate in recommending it to you as long as you’re OK with a small cluster of cousins trying to kiss up to their grouchy Aunt Hilda (Kathleen Turner—not that you’d recognize her if you haven’t seen much of her since her seductive turn in the magnificent Body Heat [Lawrence Kasdan, 1981]) who’s dying of cancer. Plus, I might as well get this out (so to speak) with another possible turn-off, which I decided not to bury in the Spoiler alert, the sight of an old man’s actual penis poking out of his pants (in a flaccid condition, as he’s almost passed out from too much booze, certainly one of the reasons for the R rating, although had it been erect surely we’d find this movie as an NC-17, to “protect the children” of course). Want to continue?
So, if you’re still with me, here’s a brief rundown on what you’d see in The Estate. Close-to-destitute sisters in New Orleans, Macey (Toni Collette) and Savannah (Anna Faris), are about to lose the rundown bar left to them by their late father (who’s buried across the street) due to an eminent-domain move by the city (further, twice-divorced Macey has a boyfriend, Geoff [Gichi Gamba], but he’s about to be sent by his job to Alaska, a move he can’t afford to reject given his obligations of alimony and a daughter in college) when they decide to try to make nice with dying Aunt Hilda who doesn’t care for them or their mother, Diane (Patricia French). However, when they get to her grand home they find their cousins, Beatrice (Rosemarie DeWitt), with husband James (Ron Livingston), and Richard (David Duchovny)—“Call me Dick”—are already there with the same intentions, although these others are not only already more in Hilda’s good graces but they also have given her some presents she appreciates so Macey and Savannah fear they’re to be left out of the will entirely.
As Hilda’s looking through a photo scrapbook that (seemingly-devoted-but-truly-smarmy—she’s not really much appreciative of James either) Beatrice put together, Hilda reminisces about a guy she drooled over in high school, Bill (Danny Vinson), so Macey and Savannah use the Internet to find Bill’s actually close by, leading them to visit him in hopes of connecting him with Hilda for some senior shenanigans, upping their status in the will. The only snag is that he’s living in a halfway-house for sex offenders as he’s had a tendency to expose himself when he’s drunk so he’s sworn off both behaviors in his old age. The sisters bring him to meet with Hilda (she’s delighted), so Beatrice schemes to find some way to make him disgusting (he’s been honest with Hilda about his past, but she’s forgiving as long as he maintains his vows). Beatrice and Dick (James leaves, finally disgusted with his wife’s actions) agree to trick Hilda into signing a new will that will share her wealth equally as long as the sisters help in setting Bill up for a fall, getting him drunk, then put in the company of their other sister, Ellen (Keyla Monterroso Mejia), so he’ll unzip, which Ellen agrees to as long as her siblings will finally play a round of her passionate Dungeons and Dragons game with her.
⇒It all goes as planned except Bill gets too drunk, can’t respond much to Ellen so Macey gets the task of pulling out his penis, is about to help stiffen it up when Hilda comes out on her balcony, screams at Bill, sends him away. Hilda soon goes away as well, with the probate reading of her holdings showing $17 million; however, debts reduce it to a mere $38.17 so all of the cousins’ efforts have been in vain. Macey does get possession of a dog painting, though, which, in the final scene, is about to be trashed until a paper falls out of the back showing it’s been appraised at $4 million, leaving the sisters (and Mom) in comfort after all.⇐ No, none of these folks are likable (although Macey does have her decent moments while James comes off as a stooge for Beatrice but finally stirs up some gumption; Bill’s actually trying to better himself until he sees the financial windfall he’ll get if he goes along with Hilda’s impetuous desire to immediately marry him), so you’re easily excused if you find the humor only in their competing wickedness—or am I just trying another rationalization, that of experiencing pleasure while dismissing the motives of these scoundrels. If nothing else, I can honestly say the acting’s marvelous, especially by Collette, Faris, Duchovny, and Turner with the rest of the cast meshing nicely. Yet, what’s so damn bad in the eyes of the OCCU?
One answer to that comes from Katie Walsh in the Los Angeles Times (admittedly, written in 2022): “Watching ‘The Estate’ feels like being gaslit as we attempt to understand the purpose of anyone’s actions, or find any humor in these morbidly bleak antics, when there is simply nothing there. It’s not funny, it’s not satirical, and it’s not worth your time, or Toni Collette’s. Hopefully it was a nice trip to New Orleans.” But I’m not totally alone here, as evidenced by Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian (his 3 of 5 stars parallels my rating), who responded in 2023: “This is a very silly and fantastically crass film, and there is something magnificent and horrible in the scene when the old flame’s penis does indeed make an appearance outside his trousers; despite or because of these things it is often funny. Added to which, the very impressive cast give it everything they’ve got; nothing with Collette in it can be bad.” See it or not, a choice I'll leave for you. I'll move on to my standard trope of closing out a review with a Musical Metaphor: I’m going a bit sideways again with the song “Me and My Uncle”—which has nothing directly to do with the events of The Estate, but I think the closing sentiment of these lyrics does speak directly to the nature of the family being explored in this movie, although I’ll have to leave that sentiment to be discovered directly by you when listening to it because I wouldn’t want to spoil that ending. The song was written in 1963 by John Phillips (of the soon-to-be-famous group, the Mamas & the Papas) was recorded by many, became a standard concert tune of the Grateful Dead so I’ll use their 1981 performance at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=Rt-vdU781as in tribute to their recently-deceased former bassist Phil Lesh; however, the lyrics are a bit muffled in this video so, for clarity, here’s Phillips' version, and, if you want to find it on an album seemingly the earliest appearance was here, on The Judy Collins Concert (1964).*
*In the 1960s I wasn’t aware of any recording of this song, yet I did hear it as an undergrad at the U. of Texas at Austin in my role as one of the managers (and occasional performer) of The Basement coffee house (located, naturally, in the basement of the U.T. Catholic Student Center) where one of our regular singers was a fellow undergrad, Jim Ritchie. I don’t know who he got it from, but it was impactful when he sang it, the ending coming as a surprise to new audience members, an irony to those of us who’d hear it before. I don’t directly know much of Jim after roughly 1970 (although this site is about him in 2020, but you have to subscribe, as I did, if you want to read it), except I know his song, “Tennessee Bottle,” was recorded by Kenny Rogers (1978 album The Gambler, which went 5x platinum), though through a legal complication Jim got his scant songwriter royalties from it.
SHORT TAKES
Here’s another of my non-cinematic inclusions in the SHORT TAKES section, this one about my marginal connection to a couple of major athletes. Considering I’ve never been athletic at all (my best “accomplishments” have been to barely break 100 in golf, barely get over 100 in bowling), my tie-ins to these guys would have to do with similar injuries, where I can truly relate. Last Saturday in the second 2024 World Series game (LA Dodgers went up 2-0 games over the NY Yankees that night [won the Series tonight, 4 games to 1]) superstar Shohei Ohtani—the likely National League 2024 MVP—partially dislocated his left shoulder attempting to steal second base (he stole 59 of them during the regular season) when he did the same thing I did some years ago, slammed his left wrist on the ground pushing his arm bones up a bit out of the socket (I had a complete dislocation, requiring the painful pulling of the arm back into place, but my injury came as an accident as I was gawking at some architecture, didn’t see a bump in the sidewalk I banged into, fell down; big ouch!!).
A difference between us, though, is that 2 days later he’s back in the lineup for game 3 (did nothing spectacular, though) while I had to wear a sling for awhile, take pain killers, go through extensive physical therapy. Somewhat similarly, I can also empathize with basketball’s Golden State Warrior Stephen Curry (2-time NBA MVP, 2024 Olympics gold medalist) who sprained his ankle in a game on Sunday night, just as I did years ago (prior to my shoulder splat), although mine was from over-imbibing at a party, taking a tumble while walking outside; I’m a bit more like Curry than Ohtani, nevertheless, in that he’s going to miss a few games while I also limped around for awhile, had to wear a sneaker on that foot rather than my usual boot, did a lot of Epson Salts soakings, but when I was back to normal I probably still couldn’t have run the length of a basketball court while keeping up a dribble even if I were the only one there. Still, it’s nice to know I’ve been able to share something with these 2 monumental men; now, if I could only get even a fraction of their multi-millions salaries!
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options: (1) Recent theatrical releases you can stream or rent (I'll pass on most of these, seen a few); (2) 5 body horror movies; (3) Directors with the most Oscar wins; (4) IMDb's 5 Things to Watch on the week of 10/28/2024 (see any of them if you like; I’ll pass on all 5).
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