The Year of Getting to Know Us

I saw this at Sundance earlier in the year. I didn't know anything about it going into the festival and it blew me away. Sharon Stone was terrific. I'm not a huge fan of hers, but the scenes of her and her son when he was a boy were terrific. Tom Arnold was also great as her car sales/womanizing husband. Jimmy Fallon was oddly serious throughout the film. I was hoping he'd crack a jock every once in a while, but he was supposed to play is straight and he was good. Lucy Liu was also good as his girlfriend. The movie was a thoughtful/funny meditation on the father/son/family dynamic...of loss, love and regrets. Surprisingly good film.

Ron Rocket (Tom Arnold) has a stroke during his weekly golf game. His son Christopher Rocket (Jimmy Fallon) is estranged and living in NYC with his girlfriend Anne (Lucy Liu). He goes home to Arcade, Florida where they have the big house in the small town. He reconnects with womanizing friend Nickie Apple (Tony Hale) and old crush Kim Temple (Jordana Spiro). In flashbacks, his flighty mother Jane (Sharon Stone) asks Ron to make that "The Year of Getting to Know Us". Christine Jacobson (Illeana Douglas) is their neighbor.

Jimmy Fallon is trying dramatic acting. It's limited. The directions are also limited. The writing needs some interest. Hale is interesting but in general, the modern time is a drag. The flashbacks could be a compelling coming-of-age story for the young Chris. I rather cut out the entire present day story and do only the past. I suggest this fully understanding that Tom Arnold is a big part of that part of the story. He would probably be better in dramatic acting than Jimmy Fallon.

Christopher Rocket (Jimmy Fallon) returns home after news that his father is dying. Home is Florida, where he was raised by his emotionally-abusing, distant and womanizing father (Tom Arnold) and his soon-to-be-hippie and emotionally-abused mother (Sharon Stone). Home is not where the heart is.

We have many flashbacks of the out-of-whack dynamics of Chris's childhood. Most of which weren't need, primarily because these are good actors, so we only needed a scene or two to see that Chris never got the love and support that he should have.

Chris as an adult is an emotionally-distant and cynical young man. His beautiful girlfriend Anne (Lucy Liu), beautiful on the inside and out, thinks he can grow up, accept his parents and then enter into a mature and committed relationship with her if he has a heart-to-heart with his father in the hospital. You know, the father who's in a coma and the one who has never said a meaningful word to his son in his entire life - oh, how naive some supporting characters can be. The almost brilliantly funny scene of Chris attempting a conversation with his father in the hospital only landed him in jail. Maturity will have to come later.

This is Jimmy Fallon playing a very sullen man in a drama-comedy that is mostly drama. Almost completely drama with a lot of slow scenes building up to emotionally-abusive results which we already knew from previous slow scenes building up to emotionally-abusive results. These struggles with maturity have been seen before, either in other dysfunctional family dramedies or in the first few scenes or trailer of this film since they didn't have too much more to add, but "The Year of Getting to Know Us" is a pretty good film, well acted and with solid characters.

Some years ago I picked up a copy of a literary magazine and found a story by Ethan Canin. It was excellent. As time went by I read two collections of his short stories and novellas and one novel. They ranged from good to great.

Two movies were made of his short stories. Both were good, and faithful to the stories so I was looking forward to seeing The Year Of Getting to Know Us. What a disappointment. I read both stories again upon which the movie was based, and wondered if either the director or the actors had read them.

I realize a director can't always capture the story as written in a play or movie but - The story occurred in California not Florida. There's nothing to indicate in either short story that the mother was a flake. There's no indication the father was a car salesman, only that he was successful in business. The father had multiple affairs not multiple marriages. The woman the father was having sex with in his convertible, wasn't the neighbors wife. The son was married to his significant other. The woman wasn't just his girlfriend. He was an English teacher, not a writer. His wife was a journalist not a lawyer. They lived in Boston not New York. There's a comic element to the father in the movie, not in the story. The emphasis in the story is the relationship of the son to his father, the relationship between the son and his wife is minor, and so on.

The next time this director makes a movie, I hope he writes his own story or picks a second class author. I hate it when directors mess up perfectly good literature.

I saw this movie at Sundance and thought it was totally compelling (particularly Sharon Stone as the unhinged mom) and found many scenes profoundly reminded me of my own dysfunctional family. I caught myself laughing out loud a number of times, especially at Tony Hale - you know, buster from Arrested Development. I did find, however, the film seemed a little long and somehow unfinished - like a couple of other movies I saw at the festival which, I assume, is quite common. Imagine my surprise, when I recently heard from a friend that the movie had been shortened by the director and he was having a small screening of the new version. Wow - I thought this movie was good the first time I saw it, so I couldn't believe how much better it was the second time. Jimmy Fallon and Lucy Liu are fantastic together and the whole movie is smart, funny, moving and totally satisfying. I hope I can see it for a third time in theaters. You should see it too! LM