The Meddler Review

Will Ashton reviews The Meddler

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At once cutesy and cheesy, charming and sappy, writer/director Lorene Scafaria’s sophomore film, The Meddler, is a sensitive, deeply-felt and keenly-observed mother-daughter dramedy that constantly veers into schmaltz. It’s simple, broad and largely predictable, but at the same time, it’s sweet, amusing, appealingly relatable, disarming and, ultimately, quietly affecting.

It’s not bound to break the mould, or reinvent the formula, but it doesn’t need to, nor does it want to. It wears its familiarity with pride, keeping true to its integrity and always at ease with its modesty. Like a warm blanket in the middle of the night, or a nice glass of white wine after a long day of work, it’s comforting in all the right ways. Its ambitions are low, sure, but with a pleasant demeanour, a fine attention to character and two moving performances from Susan Sarandon and Rose Byrne, you’ll want to cozy up beside it and settle in.

We all know someone like Marnie (Sarandon). The kind of nurturing soul with a hungry heart and too much time on her hands for her own good, Marnie tends to get a little too close, intimate and forthcoming with anyone in earshot, especially with complete strangers. A widow for over a year, she’s left with a generous fortune to her name, but with no desire to spend it on herself. Having recently moved from New Jersey to LA to be closer to her struggling daughter, Lori (Byrne), a Hollywood screenwriter in the midst of writing a pilot, Marnie wants to be there for her only child, especially since Lori’s heart was torn to shreds after a nasty break-up with Jacob (Jason Ritter), a high-profile actor.

But Lori needs some boundaries. Marnie calls and texts all day, revealing every little detail about her uneventful life, with no regard for her daughter’s privacy or work hours. She even goes to the same therapist (Amy Landecker). After Lori flies to New York City to film her pilot, Marnie devotes herself elsewhere, namely towards Jillian (Cecily Strong), Lori’s lesbian friend searching for a proper wedding, and Freddy (Jerrod Carmichael), an Apple store employee working his way through night school to become a lawyer.

Now Marnie’s days are filled helping pay for Jillian’s expenses, driving Freddy to school and taking care of Lori’s dogs, but she’s still lonely. She’s ignoring her extended family, neglecting to get her late husband a proper tombstone, because she doesn’t want to admit he’s gone. She spends his money because she does want to live with such an empty consolation prize. But in the midst of giving endlessly to others, Marnie receives some unexpected relief from an unexpected source: Zipper (J.K. Simmons, in full Sam Elliott mode), a retired L.A. cop whose habits include guitar strumming and feeding his Dolly Parton-loving chickens, whom might provide this provider with what she needs to finally move forward.

As lovely and nice as it can be, The Meddler is also fairly patent and sitcom-y by design. The jokes are both wide-reaching and unvaried, resulting in a fairly hit-and-miss comedy ratio that, thankfully, the carefully-considered performances help smooth out. Not without some rough edges throughout, it’s clearly directed as a performance piece for the always-likable Sarandon, and she owns it well. Her fading Jersey accent is distracting but, much like Sally Field in Hello, My Name is Doris earlier this year, Sarandon gives an honesty and a humility to Marnie that makes her sometimes ridiculous actions still ring true. And while Sarandon is good, Byrne is even better. Her tempered, downhearted performance is among the best she’s given to date, radiant in its emotional nicety and complimented nicely by Byrne’s convincing American accent.

It’s ultimately this relationship, along with the enjoyably downplayed one shared between Sarandon and Simmons, that propels Scafaria’s latest forward admirably. Though it’s called The Meddler, it’s decidedly non-intrusive and agreeable in its mild-mannered execution. Nevertheless, you should have no qualms welcoming it all the same.