Ben Stiller is a talented actor. Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale") is a talented writer and director. But the two of them now have combined to create one of the most disagreeable, unpleasant and irritating leading men I've ever seen. I don't walk out on movies or plays. It's my job to see them and write about them. But I came awfully close to standing up, telling Stiller and Baumbach what they could do with their movie–all 107 minutes of it–and leaving.
"Greenberg" is the movie, which opens today. Roger Greenberg is the name of the character played by Stiller. He has returned to smoggy, grubby, unglamorous Los Angeles after 15 years in New York, with a nervous breakdown along the way.
So why does he feel he should give me one?
Greenberg, yet to accomplish anything in his own life, is rude, arrogant, pompous and also has a lot of bad qualities. He is staying in the luxurious Hollywood home of his brother (Chris Messina), who is off to Asia with his family for a lengthy vacation.
Greenberg reconnects with his old friend, Ivan (nice work by Rhys Ifans) and with a former girl friend, Beth (the lovely Jennifer Jason Leigh, Baumbach's wife, credited with the original story), who married and divorced while Greenberg was in New York. And he connects with Florence (Greta Gerwig), his brother's personal assistant who provides help with the various vagaries of house-sitting. Florence is a nice person, a little unsure of herself, who has a bad habit of hopping in and out of bed with men she doesn't really like.
So what gives him the right to play the tyrant, to criticize and berate her?
Baumbach obviously is providing a dissertation on loneliness, on Los Angeles, on interaction among people.
So what gives him the right to flaunt all this unpleasantness–and more to the point–to bore me?
Opens today at the Tivoli
–Joe