GOODRICH - Mark Reviews Movies

Goodrich, Ketchup Entertainment

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 17, 2024

The lead character of Goodrich is a type we've seen before. He's obsessed with work to the point of ignoring his family, forgetting all sorts of little and important events, and not seeming to care about what other people are doing or feeling. We don't see much of that from Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) in this movie, though, because writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer begins her movie by giving the man a literal wake-up call.

It's from his wife, who has checked herself into a rehabilitation facility. Andy, who owns an art gallery, had some work meeting or dinner the night before and didn't notice that his wife wasn't there when he got back home. He takes such things for granted, apparently, and doesn't notice a lot, too, because the wife has become dependent on prescription medication to get out of bed in the morning and get to sleep at night. Everyone else noticed, though, including, to some extent, the couple's young twin children, who are now entirely Andy's responsibility for the next 90 days while the wife goes through treatment.

That's the setup of Meyers-Shyer's screenplay, which is seen entirely from Andy's removed but increasingly involved perspective. We like the guy, in spite of his flaws, because Keaton is so likeably bumbling at first and so sincerely changed by being forced into the role of parent—not only to his kids from this marriage, but also to his adult daughter Grace (Mila Kunis), who's pregnant and whose relationship with her father is more akin to a friendship.

One can tell exactly where this material will go almost from the very start of the movie, and it's pretty easy to determine the broad strokes of how this story will arrive at that destination from the same point, too. Meyers-Shyer doesn't surprise us in any way, and there's some reassuring comfort in the familiar, encouraging beats of watching a man figure out there's much more to life than his job. The limited perspective, though, kind of washes over everything that Andy's life has left until this point of massive change for him.

In theory, there are other characters who matter here, such as the two young kids, Billie (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Mose (Jacob Kopera), and Grace, who gets a bit more attention in the script than any other supporting character, and the two wives Andy once had, who seem to need to get away from this self-centered man in order to have any kind of fulfillment in their lives. Yes, we can say the wife in rehab is now Andy's former spouse, since part of her big phone speech to Andy is about how she thinks the two should probably separate.

There's presumably a lot of pain in the background of this story, but Meyers-Shyer keeps it all comfortably, encouragingly in the background of Andy's surprisingly hasty transformation. The wives are spoken of, for example, and, in one case, heard early in the movie, but they remain unseen, save for a single scene each (It's a pleasant surprise to see whom the filmmaker got for the role of the first wife, so that won't be mentioned here). By the time they show up, Andy has more or less worked out the broad problems he has in his work-family balance, so there's really no reason for either of the women to speak of it in any meaningful way.

Most of this, then, becomes a comedy, as Andy struggles with the daily routines of getting his kids to school on time and with lunches packed, as well as showing up for a parent-teacher conference and making sure Billie has a glass of water on the nightstand when she goes to sleep. He's a quick learner, it seems, and soon enough, the movie primarily becomes about making us feel good in seeing this man be the loving, attentive father he had never been until now.

Admittedly, it does feel good, because Keaton is subtly funny and disarmingly charming in the role. One could argue that Andy's wife going into rehab is less a touch of reality and more a contrivance for this change, which is so relatively easy for Andy that it makes us wonder why it took him at least three decades—according to Grace, who points out that's when she realized she didn't really have a father of whom to speak—to figure out all of this. Looking at the material as a light-hearted comedy about the potential for people to change, maybe a little—or, depending on one's point of view, a major—contrivance is right in line with the story's inherent fantasy.

It does feel too much like a fantasy of sorts, however, especially considering how it starts, with the wife's desperation, and the occasional moments of honesty from Grace. She's a far more interesting character than anyone else here, because she is genuinely conflicted about seeing her father's transformation and knowing that, for whatever reason, he didn't change when it would have been good for her.

There's a late scene in Goodrich when the character lets out all of those feelings, and the truth of it hits in a way that nothing else in the movie does. Now there's a dramatic conflict worth examining. Lest it be forgotten, though, Grace is pregnant, and movies like this don't let such a convenient out go to waste.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products