Maggie, a recently divorced single mother, has just moved into a new home in Brooklyn with her 12-year old son, Oliver. Working extremely long hours at a Hospital in an effort to make enough money, Maggie is unable to spend much time with Oliver, needing a baby-sitter to help out. Enter Vincent, a grumpy, mean old man who lives directly next door. Vincent isn't exactly a perfect candidate, given his penchant to drink, smoke, and gamble, but Maggie has very few options, and Vincent needs the money. What at first seems like a terrible idea, quickly turns into an odd friendship between Oliver and Vincent, with each of them providing something that was missing to one and other. Theodore Melfi's St. Vincent is a charming albeit overly-sentimental film, that rides on the wings of Bill Murray's fantastic performance. Bill Murray's performance in St. Vincent is one of the actors' greatest, encapturing a beaten-down, crude old man whose become angry at life and everything in it. Vincent is a character that is an extremely funny but equally sad, and Murray subtlely encaptures that. St. Vincent's narrative is straight-forward with typical dramatic beats but Murray's performance convinces you to care about this story, making the dramatic impact more impressive than it has any right being. Outside of Vincent, the film falls victim to mostly poor characterizations, with Melissa McCarthy's Maggie character feeling far too under-developed. I did at times feel St. Vincent could have benefited by exploring the mother/son dynamic but then again, it would mean less Murray. St. Vincent tweaks the genre tropes enough to be interesting, using Murray's fantastic performance to make the overly-sentimental narrative surprisingly enjoyable.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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