Une semaine ordinaire

I adore Jason Bateman and when I see he's in something, I watch him. I just love his no-nonsense delivery. He never tries to be funny; he reacts to the situation at hand.

He stars in "The Longest Week" from 2014, and like another reviewer here, I'm wondering why Jenny Slate is top-billed. I didn't know who she was until I looked it up.

Bateman plays 40-year-old Conrad Valmont who lives, as he has always lived, in the Valmont Hotel, owned by his parents. One morning the phone wakes him up, informing him that security will be up shortly to escort him and his dog Napoleon out of the hotel. The reason: his parents are divorcing and aren't paying any of his bills any longer.

He is able to get his chauffeur (Barry Primus) to care for Napoleon, but as far as caring for him, he really doesn't know where to go. He does something he never does - takes the subway. On the train he makes eye contact with a beautiful young woman (Olivia Wilde), who gives him her number. Dylan moves in on his friend and rival, a successful artist, Dylan Tate.

Dylan has recently dropped his girlfriend Jocelyn and has met a fabulous woman he thinks that he's in love with. When he attends Dylan's art show, the subway woman is there, and she's the same woman with whom Dylan is in love. He promises Dylan that he will not make a play for her, but he does, and they fall in love.

Beautifully photographed, this is a pleasant film, somewhat humorous, until it nears the end. I don't now if the filmmaker ran out of money, script, or what, but the film has a constant narration for a good ten minutes as scenes are being shown with no dialogue.

Kind of left me flat, despite all of the good acting.

Tony Roberts plays Conrad's therapist, who gives him a low-cost loan. As his chauffeur, Primus plays a man who knows Conrad better than anyone and has real affection for him.

Billy Crudup, whom I saw on stage in Arcadia and who was so marvelous in Stage Beauty, is wonderful, as a friend resigned to the fact that Conrad is a woman-stealing jerk who has been in the research phase of his great novel for years. House's Olivia Wilde (that's how I know her) looks fantastic and is believable as the object of both Conrad's and Dylan's affections.

This should have been better.

The Longest Week (2014)

What a strangely almost good movie. It has lots of compelling elements, including Jason Bateman as the nice guy leading man (though here he plays a spoiled rich boy). It's a complex enough story, and a love story, and it's set in lovely Brooklyn (an almost Manhattan). It should work. And second leading man Billy Crudup is terrific—better than Bateman.

So enjoy it for what it is? Sure. But it will kludge along at times, and will get a bit obvious at other times. The women (girlfriends, mainly) are weakly cast (or weakly directed), which doesn't help. But mostly it's a matter of originality—which is missing.

In fact, the whole thing is alike a Woody Allen mashup wannabe. The voice-over will make you think too much of "Vicky Christina Barcelona" and some of the photography of "Manhattan" but in color. (They even cast Allen regular Tony Roberts in a role as, yes, a shrink.) But mostly it's "Annie Hall" redux. In fact, it's almost a remake—girl meets unlikely boy, they have a romance, it goes south, and then boy re-evaluates (with direct stealing of ideas like having the plot reappear as a play, or in this case as a novel). And even if you don't like "Annie Hall" (which I do), you have to admit it came first, and is wonderfully original.

To add insult to injury, the whole set design and shooting style is straight out of Wed Anderson, though toned down to the point of being dull. (Anderson is never dull, at least visually.)

So what is left? Lots of little moments—quaint remarks (skipping over the brazenly sexist stuff that is meant to be funny and is mostly embarrassing, like the soccer practice) and a generally nice flow of events. It's easy to watch even if you aren't enthralled.

Director and writer Peter Glanz is fairly new to the scene, and this movie is a seven day expansion of an earlier indie success, "A Relationship in Four Days." No wonder this one feels about three days too long. See it? Maybe, if you already know you like the cast or the genre. Or maybe just give the Allen films a second try. Worlds apart.

This isn't such a bad movie as it is a slow movie. Outside of that it's perfectly watchable. At movies finish my first thought was 'this is a flick for the one percent'.

This story centers around a 40 year rich playboy who finds himself essentially broke for one week. Does he suffer? No! Does he learn anything about everyday life? No! Bateman as Conrad Valmont just escapes to his well off friends and successfully hides his new status as 'broke' at least for awhile. In the mean time he still lives the privileged life because he has a name associated with wealth and others just cater to him. Plus he is constantly looking inward. In the end nothing really changed him. His only act of altruism is giving a street person a box of cigarettes and replacing cash he stole from a friend. Oh and around all this is a love story!

The photography is lush, dialog is wonderful, the acting is fine. But the plot gets very slow about 40 minutes into the movie and you'll wonder where this is going. It goes no where because the one percent are so insulated from the outside world any change in their lifestyle is a brief inconvenience. He ends up right back where he started with a book he wrote that nobody cared for.

Without Olivia Wilde, this would be absolutely unwatchable. It wants to be Goddardian and early Woody Allenesk, but it's lack of character development and its weak dialogue not to mention it being devoid of any philosophical or social commentary take it nowhere. Perhaps if Crudup had had the lead and Batemen wasn't cast at all, the acting would have made it more compelling?

"Sometimes you're your own worst enemy." Conrad (Bateman) is forty and still living off his parents. He has no ambition in life and is content living in a hotel that he doesn't have to pay for. When his friend introduces him to his newest girlfriend, Beatrice (Wilde), Conrad falls in love. When his parents decide to separate Conrad is cut off and now he has no job, no place to live and is in love with his best friends girl. I am a huge Jason Bateman fan so I was excited to watch this. While I can't say this is a bad movie I can say it was a little slow and somewhat generic. It may be because I watch so many movies but about 15 minutes in I predicted what would happen, and I was right. That said, the movie isn't terrible but I was hoping for something a little better. Overall, not terrible but pretty predictable, generic and slow moving. I expected something better with Jason Bateman and Olivia Wilde. I give this a B-.