FILM REVIEW: "St. Vincent"

Cute kid who steals the show.

I usually don't review movies that have been in theaters for a while, but in this case anyone who saw "St. Vincent" has surely forgotten it by now so I feel emboldened to go on. It's a minor tearjerker that thinks it's funny and revolves around three truths:
1. Bill Murray is older than any of us wants to admit and is now going for pathos rather than laughs.
2. Melissa McCarthy is still extremely fat but competently handles the role of a normal person with no gross farting scenes.
3. A waif-like child actor is capable of stealing the show.

The child actor in question, Jaeden Lieberher, is adorable, endearing and the major cause of the tears. As the protagonist, maybe 11 or 12, his after-school babysitter is a cranky, unemployed, down on his luck neighbor (Murray) hired by his struggling single mother (McCarthy). She is in the midst of a custody battle with her mean, successful, ex-husband who is of course a lawyer, and goes off to work each day to fight the good blue-collar fight. Bill takes the kid under his damaged, drunken, foul-mouthed wing and teaches him the bitter truths of Life, all with love of course.

Also on hand is Naomi Watts, who seems to be in every movie lately and must have gotten a new agent. She is more than capable as a pregnant prostitute with a heart of gold and a strange foreign accent who Bill pays for sex and companionship. They end up seemingly together, so naturally we wonder if the baby is his.

Bill is the saint of the title, a fact that stems from the Medal of Honor he won in Vietnam, his weekly visits to his wife in a nursing home-- he has done her laundry for the past eight years--and caring for the neighbor's kid for 12 bucks an hour. Who knew laundry leads to sainthood? (If that's true, I am clearly a saint several times over.)

The film has been marketed as a comedy but it's sad a lot of the time and downright depressing for the rest of it. And the closing credits are just stupid and silly; don't sit through them unless you want to hear Bob Dylan singing and watch Bill Murray trying for an Oscar he surely will not get. (It's embarrassing.)