A mawkish, laughably clichéd outing, This Is Where I Leave You proves you can lead Hollywood to great actors, but you can’t make it think.
Starring Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver and Corey Stoll as adult siblings reunited at their father’s funeral, Shawn Levy and Henry Dunn’s feature suffers an identity crisis. It tries to be a drama, a rom-com and a slapstick family farce all at once. First-time screenwriter Jonathan Tropper shamelessly mines genre films for their best parts, taking his rom-com and music cues from The Cutting Edge and Strictly Ballroom; familial drama heft from August Osage County; clumsy fighting sibling schtick from The Family Stone; maternal breast jokes from The Wedding Crashers; and the bittersweet romance of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Meanwhile, the exposition-laden script is lifted from every self-help book ever written.
The lack of originality (not to mention the constant misogyny) is rage-inducing, because the cast deserves so much better.
Tina Fey is on top dramatic form as the acerbic older sister, forced to raise her brothers as a girl and left to raise her own children as an ignored wife.
Adam Driver is (as ever) utterly superb as the charismatic “family fuck-up”, a young man desperately trying to be selfish and insensitive, but whose familial loyalty and love bursts from him as forcefully as expletives.
But the film is of a piece with Jason Bateman’s role as the deadpan brother forced to be the family’s glue: familiar, flat and phoned-in. Unconvincing romances, affairs, miscarriages and wife-swapping are shoe-horned in as often as self-righteous monologues, until no comedic nor dramatic stone is left unturned.
Originality, this is where we leave you.