Review of The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017) by Jluis_001 — 12 Oct 2017

I've always believed that Noah Baumbach is kind of a fraud, I suppose that for many it will be somewhat aggressive to say that about him because I have noticed that a lot of people idolize him and idolize his films. I am not one of those, until today I had only seen five films of his filmography, now six with this one and to be honest the only one that left me a true impression was The Squid and the Whale, that was a really good movie.

So I must say that my expectations for this one weren't actully great, regardless of the good reviews that it was receiving, but I guess that in the end that helped a lot for me to enjoy this film more quietly and that is probably also one of the reasons why this film is now my second favorite of his entire career.

The humanity and naturalness of The Meyerowitz Stories overflows with a simplicity that spreads and leads you until the end without being quite sure of the things that happened, but that is the point of everything and really what the film portrays so naturally is life itself, unpretentious, is a family drama of reunion, redemption and acceptance, of facing what you have ignored at certain moments and now it's in your face forcing you to act.

It is that simplicity and naturalness that enhance the human side of the film and the human side of its protagonists wich also gets more enhaced by the performances of the actors who get everything to work with such easiness that you rarely find viable in this sort of films.

There is solid performances by its cast, there is no weak link among them, Ben Stiller is correct in every scene, Adam Sandler giving one of the best performances of his career and the best in more than a decade; Dustin Hoffman without much gives enough, works very well, Emma Thompson is perhaps a little lost but also works fine where she should while Elizabeth Marvel as the other Meyerowitz sibling is the constant of reason between the characters of Stiller and Sandler.

Maybe I just have to mention that Grace Van Patten's role as the daughter Sandler's character has a few good moments in the film like the one when she's singing in the piano with Sandler, but mostly I think that the scenes where we see the films that her character made were only scenes in which she got naked gratuitously without contributing anything to her character or to the background of the story.

The rest is very simple to say, The Meyerowitz Stories is a simple and unpretentious film that reminds us that cinema can contribute a lot with so little.

Netflix gets one of its best hits in all its history, I admit that I would have loved to see it in cinemas but I am still happy with its distribution, I just hope it gets the attention of the public. I fully recommend it.