Review of Brad's Status (2017) by K Nife C — 01 Nov 2017

Brad's Status is the kind of movie one wishes were a person so it could be given a wedgie. It is the second movie this year to feature Ben Stiller dealing with middle age and daddy issues, but, absent Noah Baumbach's dark humor, it barely holds a candle to the already less than stellar The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).

Stiller has the petty, insecure schmuck schtick down pat from decades of mediocre films, so this movie was made for him to star. Well, to be fair, it was made for him to mope around on screen while his constant, insipid voice over narration rambles off every whim and rumination that passes through his bland head.

It would be funny if they actually played it for what it is, a pathetic underachiever who is too much of a coward to be the horrible person that he wants to be. There are always glimmers of him being relatable, however, and it's annoying that the film makers want us to empathize with that sentiment.

Wishing for your wife's parents to die so you can inherit their money is hardly endearing in the context of the film, it's not funny, and it serves as just the first exhibit in the cringe gallery of Brad's mid-life crisis.

In one interaction, a young woman tries to drive home to him that most of his problems are somewhat trivial in comparison to actual suffering, and he seems to process it to some degree. Yet, he doesn't really change, and he continues to be wallow in his self-imposed misery even during the cheap existential epiphany he has of crying during an orchestral swell.

As a cautionary tale, there are no great lessons to be taken away from this, and it's feeble attempts at subtle humor hardly ever land.