By Chris Feil
Earlier this year, Lorene Scafaria's The Meddler sadly came and went quietly before summer kicked (and punched and brooded) into high gear. Unlike Susan Sarandon's needling mother at its center, the film is laidback and unimposing, the kind of lovely simple comedy we beg for more of and too often ignore once it arrives. Now on DVD, the film is a gem that you'll need to catch up with...
The Meddler stars Sarandon as a widowed California mother trying all the wrong ways to stay connected to her distanced daughter Lori (Rose Byrne). When one of Lori's writing projects heads to New York to film a pilot, Sarandon's Marnie is left to fill the void with Lori's friends and a few new acquaintances, played by a bursting cast including J.K. Simmons, Casey Wilson, and Michael McKean - as much as the film is Sarandon's showcase, she is surrounded by a delightful supporting cast.
However, Sarandon's performance as the widowed Marnie is much more intelligently modulated than you might expect from a character that initially comes off as familiar....
Marnie is far more believable for the way the actress underplays her more absurd behavior, such as paying for the wedding of a basic stranger or befriending an Apple store clerk. Her extreme extroversion is an obvious coping mechanism, but Sarandon avoids sappy melodrama by guarding Marnie's pain at all costs. Her lighthearted zeal for life is precisely the thing that she uses to mask her pathos and the actress is as protective of it as the character.
If all this sounds darker than expected, rest assured that her performance is light on its feet and relentlessly funny. By my estimate, she delivers the punchline of the year in a third act airport scene.
The film's relaxed pace and simmering laughs make for a deceptively insightful character study. Where weaker (and meaner) comedies turn a character like Marnie into the butt of the joke, The Meddler is patient and intrigued with her. Lorene Scafaria makes a sizable step forward as both writer and director, delivering a film both personal and loaded with nuanced delights. There is nary a moment that Scafaria sacrifices honesty for broader laughs or organic feeling for cheap emotion.
What The Meddler lacks in bravado, it makes up for with confidence and understated joy. It's a relief to see a comedy with the smarts to earn its laughs through measured emotional insight. As the film shows, your warm fuzzies need not be diluted by lack of complexity.
Grade: B+
MVP: Susan Sarandon, obviously. (Though there is a great music cue for Dolly Parton's "Here You Come Again" that's both funny and adorable.)
Oscar Chances: Probably unlikely, but maybe Sarandon could make it into the Golden Globes Comedy race.