When life creeps up on you...

Ben Stiller gets serious in movie on mid-life crisis

Published: Wed 17 Feb 2010, 7:38 PM

Last updated: Mon 6 Apr 2015, 12:26 PM

BEN STILLER DITCHES the slapstick comedy and gets more serious in Greenberg, a low budget drama about a man in mid-life crisis struggling to deal with painful truths about himself and his failures.

The American actor best known for comedies like Meet the Fockers and There’s Something About Mary, and the hit Night at the Museum action franchise, said he enjoyed the change from more familiar fare.

“For me it was an opportunity to work with (director) Noah (Baumbach), who I was a big fan of,” Stiller told reporters after a press screening on Sunday at the Berlin film festival, where Greenberg is in the main competition lineup.

“It was great to be able to work in a movie that was not that other kind of film,” the 44-year-old added.

Stiller plays Roger Greenberg, a 40-year-old part-time New York carpenter recovering from a mental breakdown who travels to house-sit for his wealthy brother at his home high in the Hollywood Hills.

Determined to do nothing, and not feel guilty about it in bustling Los Angeles, he reunites with two old band mates who are still bitter at his decision 15 years earlier to reject an offer from a major record label.

He falls for his brother’s assistant Florence, played by Greta Gerwig, but mental issues and an awareness of his own shortcomings make him unpredictable and abusive.

“I think it’s a really believable path that these people are on,” Stiller said of Greenberg and Florence.

Welsh actor Rhys Ifans plays Ivan, one of the band members who is overcoming a drink problem and has a son whom a self-centred Greenberg never bothered to get to know.

Painful Truths

Ivan tells a shocked Greenberg how others perceive him, and the two reflect on life with the bitterness of people who feel they could have done more.

“They say youth is wasted on the young,” Ivan says.

“Life is wasted on people,” Greenberg retorts.

Further comedy comes from the protagonist’s obsession with writing letters to corporations and city officials to complain about whatever bothers him, accusing Starbucks of serving lousy coffee and American Airlines of having faulty seats.

As well as a love story, Greenberg is a movie about growing up.

“Life sort of creeps up on you,” said Stiller. “I’ve got two kids, and kids force you to thinking outside of yourself a little bit.

“There is a feeling like you have ... your life ahead of you. Greenberg is really coming up against the fact that he doesn’t. You have to accept those things and that’s part of growing up.”

Baumbach wrote the script with his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, who also appears in the movie.

The New Yorker is best known for his scripts, and was a writer on Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

A film with little charm

NOAH BAUMBACH SEEMS intent on laying his own distinctive claim to a territory already overcrowded with developers, that of adults swamped in disabling neuroses, bad behaviour and self-absorption. You can add Jewish angst as well in the case of Greenberg.

While winning no points for originality, Baumbach and his co-conspirator in the script, Jennifer Jason Leigh to whom he’s married — have created an all-too-convincing portrait of a 40-year-old man in emotional freefall.

What they are unable to fully achieve is a means to make enough audience members care so that Greenberg might cross over to a wider viewership than a psychiatrists’ convention. Critical acclaim in certain circles may fuel modest box-office returns for Focus Features, since the movie is a brave one for both the filmmakers and their star, Ben Stiller.

The actor, of course, has made a career out of playing comically neurotic though sympathetic protagonists, but here the laughs peter out quickly. Roger Greenberg is just out of an extended stay in the hospital after a nervous breakdown, so his aimlessness and whining have a rather sad resonance.

Roger has returned to Los Angeles, where he once had something of a career as a musician, from New York. He’s staying in his successful brother’s Hollywood Hills home while the family is on vacation. So he meets his brother’s pretty assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig).

Talk about two lost souls finding each other. Florence aspires to be a singer despite minimal talent, but she is really at loose ends. She’s much younger than Roger, though, so her confusion about life doesn’t seem so pathetic.

The two struggle to start a romantic relationship, yet Roger fights it at every turn. It’s as if he doesn’t trust happiness. He can be so ugly that it’s a wonder she even talks to him.

Possibly she wouldn’t accept that the Greenbergs’ dog has taken sick and Roger, who doesn’t even drive, is pretty helpless about things like getting the dog to the vet.

Roger does reach out to people in his past, former band mate Ivan (Rhys Ifans) and ex-lover Beth (Leigh). Ivan is sympathetic but distracted by marital woes while Beth has simply moved on.

Such is the repetitive nature of the story that the characters go in continual circles. Those circles do widen, though, so you gain a greater appreciation of the root cause of Roger’s dysfunctional behaviour. But understanding is one thing, sympathy another.

Stiller has rather successfully created an off-putting character of only slight charm and huge personality quirks. You’re only too happy the guy is up there on the screen and not anywhere near your own life.

Gerwig, a filmmaker-actor from the independent world, does much better on the empathy front. The messiness of her character’s life feels correctable, and she seems capable of regaining control. You wish Florence luck with Roger but hold no great expectations.

Baumbach and Leigh astutely observe the L.A. scene with keen insights into the myriad ways people can screw up their lives and never think to blame themselves. The city becomes an actual character here but, alas, one that is no more likable than any other in the movie.

Tech credits shine in a movie that is talky yet somehow still cinematic.