There's little to salvage 'The Savages'

It's hard to find humor - or comfort - in portrayals of serious real-life situations and contrived conflict.

By Steve Persall, Times film critic
Published January 17, 2008

The Savages
Grade: C+
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbe
Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins
Rating: R; profanity, sexuality
Running time: 113 min.

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The Savages is trapped in no-movie's-land, between the seriousness of its subjects and writer-director Tamara Jenkins urging us to laugh at them. Some things are too serious to joke about.

But are these really jokes that Jenkins delivers about two aggressively neurotic siblings dealing with their aged father's dementia? I'm not convinced, although Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as the nastier of the two was nominated for a Golden Globe in the comedy/musical best actor category.

He doesn't sing, so somebody must think The Savages is funny.

Hoffman plays Jon Savage, a college professor sweating an ill-advised book on Bertolt Brecht, as Steve Carell's character pined to define Marcel Proust in Little Miss Sunshine. Literary academia is a sign of unbalanced personality in movies like these. It allows writers like Jenkins to have Jon say "Oedipal rage in Beckett," referring both to a class he needs covered and also to his own condition.

The Savages is full of such obviousness: glib lines and musical cues announcing what viewers are smart enough to notice on their own. The movie never quite finds its emotional tempo, jerking between contrived conflict and dark humor. Jenkins regularly sets up Jon and his sister, Wendy (Laura Linney), with what actors call "business," using props and tics to pinpoint character when words aren't enough.

The screenwriter's self-consciousness is never more evident than when a student asks Jon the difference between plot and narrative in a film attempting neither.

Wendy is the more pitiful of the siblings, a failed playwright (again, literate insanity) sustaining on prescription drugs and a dead-end affair with a married neighbor (Peter Friedman). Linney plays her in a constant hysterical state that, colliding with Jon's crassness, is often annoying. That may be Jenkins' point but nobody in the movie notices, not even the nursing home staff that would usher them away for their father's own good.

Last year's Away from Her dealt with the issue of dementia, using sympathetic characters and no joking. That felt appropriate. The Savages certainly wouldn't be comforting to anyone in a comparable situation. Here, assisted living is shown as assisted dying, with a staff that generally doesn't care except when the father (Philip Bosco) picks The Jazz Singer as a movie night choice and Al Jolson's blackface offends them.

Nobody can fault these formidable actors for not finding heart that Jenkins didn't put on the page. Neither should their reputations make The Savages seem more accomplished than it is, although that appears to be the case among many critics. Jon and Wendy are jerks and though their father may be blamed - Jenkins suggests he's getting what he deserves - we wind up hoping they don't die before they also experience what it's like to get old.

Steve Persall can be reached at persall@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8365. Read his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.

[Last modified January 15, 2008, 17:22:22]