Review: 'The Meyerowitz Stories'

My friends and fellow podcasters on the "Everyone is a Critic" podcast like to joke about my disdain for Adam Sandler. They seem to believe that I harbor some personal grudge against the man. It’s not true but it makes for a funny running gag. In reality, I have a professional grudge against Adam Sandler, nothing personal. I am professionally irritated by Adam Sandler because he continually works so far below his talent.

That’s right, I believe Adam Sandler is talented. In fact, I believe Adam Sandler is remarkably talented. Unfortunately, he chooses to abandon his gifts in favor of a steady, high dollar paycheck and the chance to goof off with his friends. It’s irritating to me as a critic to watch a man I know can act pretending that he can’t. Make no mistake, Adam Sandler can act. When he works with a real director, one with vision and the ability to bend Sandler to his or her will, Sandler can deliver a genuine powerhouse performance. His new film, under the direction of Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories, reinforces my point.

In The Meyerowitz Stories, Adam Sandler plays Danny, a single father to a college-bound daughter, Eliza (Grace Van Patten), and the son a respected sculptor and professor, Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman). Danny has a wonderful relationship with his daughter and a terribly fraught relationship with his father. Unfortunately for him, Eliza is leaving for college and having recently broken up with Eliza’s mother, Danny is going to stay with his dad and dad’s flighty gal-pal Maureen (Emma Thompson).

Danny has a sister named Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) and a half-brother, Matthew (Ben Stiller), whom his father adores and can’t resist mentioning in front of Danny. Where Danny has never had a job, he was essentially a house husband and father after abandoning his musical aspirations, Matthew has moved to Los Angeles and become a successful financial advisor to celebrities. That Matthew left to escape their father, is something Harold ignores and Danny is unaware of.

When Harold falls ill and is left in a coma all of the family secrets come to the surface and the identity of each of the Meyerowitz kids is thrown into chaos as they realize they’ve all defined themselves by Harold’s whim. Danny is defined by his resentment for Harold, Jean by his lack of affection and Matthew by the way he withheld praise, Harold only seems to speak highly of Matthew when he’s not around. As these feelings surface, each of our main characters finds a moment of truth and catharsis.

Adam Sandler’s performance in The Meyerowitz Stories is entirely free of his lazy antics. Sure, we are introduced to Sandler as he’s yelling while trying to find a parking space on a busy New York City street, but there isn’t that laconic nastiness to him. Immediately, the scene shifts to Sandler as doting, loving father sharing a lovely memory with the daughter he’s learning how to let go of a little. Here we see the character of Danny at his best but soon we will see another side of him, one that is deeply wounded and extraordinarily sympathetic.

Dustin Hoffman and Adam Sandler have played father and son before, in the little-seen comic drama The Cobbler. The two have good negative chemistry. Danny and Harold don’t so much talk as try to talk over and around each other, every conversation is a jousting match. Harold is the louder and more dominant of the two and takes an almost unconscious pride in forcing his son to abandon his point in favor of listening to Harold. That Harold’s words are punctuated with little, hurtful jabs at his oldest son likely gives him an advantage.

Matthew Meyerowitz (Ben Stiller) was smart enough to recognize that he could never win a verbal war with dad so he moved to Los Angeles. The distance, he believes, lessens the hurt of a father who wielded his approval as a cudgel to establish dominance. I know I am painting Harold as a monster but as played by Hoffman, he’s like a cactus disguised as a fuzzy teddy bear, embrace at your own risk. Stiller’s Matthew is similarly prickly, especially toward his older brother, but he’s less aware of the effect he has on people.

Noah Baumbach does a remarkable job of crafting these short stories that coalesce into larger stories of people coming to terms with the past and forging a way forward that makes sense to them. The Meyerowitz siblings are a winning trio of good people pushed to the brink of their patience and good nature by a bitter father looking for something he can use to prove his worth. Harold’s life is defined by the celebrity and success he feels he deserved but never achieved. Having come up short he makes sure his children know that they could never match up to him.

It is, again, a rather monstrous character trait but Hoffman is somehow never entirely off-putting. His frailty, that cuddly beard and his charisma repeatedly fool you into not seeing him as a villain. These same qualities are what keep drawing his children close to him and while we might want them to get away from the old man and find their own happiness and identity away from him, we completely understand why these characters are drawn to their old man beyond the simple measure of honor thy father.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach specializes in such familial based horrors. His The Squid and the Whale was a remarkable examination of a destructive family dynamic and while I didn’t care for his Margot at the Wedding, the characters were lively and vivid for what I could endure of them. Here, Baumbach has reached his peak as a chronicler of difficult men and their troubled children. The Meyerowitz Stories is a terrifically pitched comedy and drama filled with sympathetic characters and some very big, often unpredictable laughs.