Film Review: THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES

Grumpy father and son: Hoffman and Sandler

The full pretentious title of this very pretentious movie is The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected). Don't ask me why. A Netflix Original with a terrific cast, it's billed as a comedy and I figured it would get me out of my recent slump. I was wrong. In fact by the end of it I was more depressed than ever.

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson, with small roles for Judd Hirsch and Candace Bergen, one could assume at the very least some fine acting. Wrong again. Hoffman plays the old and annoying father to Sandler and Stiller (and their sister whose name I didn't recognize and who doesn't really matter in the story anyway) and you just want to smack him in the face, he is such a pain in the ass. Plus he mumbles his dialog so half the time you don't even know what he's saying. 

This is a dysfunctional movie about a dysfunctional family, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, who once again shows us, as he has in his other films (Marriage Story, The Squid and the Whale) that he had a very messed-up childhood. There is nothing funny about it, except that it got made. Pass this one by.