From first-time director Theodore Melfi comes St. Vincent, featuring Bill Murray as grouchy,
hedonistic war veteran Vincent who realises he can make himself some money by ‘baby-sitting’
the young son of his new neighbour (Melissa McCarthy). As Oliver (newcomer
Jaeden Lieberher) gets to know his jaded elder better, the latter slowly
emerges from his shell and develops a bond with his young charge.
A real problem with reviewing St. Vincent is that it doesn’t feel like a film, more a collection
of bits roughly held together by a rather wrung-dry premise that makes the
entire film rather predictable, especially if your eyes and ears have been
subjected to the awfulness of the trailer which gives almost everything away
besides the ending…which you can see coming from a mile off. Even the poster
(the assembled leads airbrushed to within an inch of their life half-smiling in
that ‘quirky’ way) tells you everything you need to know.
So once you’ve got past the problem of the ending, you’re
left to pick up whatever pieces remain amongst the rest of the film: Bill
Murray is easily the best thing in the movie by a square mile, bringing to bear
his usual deadpan grumpiness with unequalled skill and grace, while Lieberher as
Oliver will definitely be one to watch in the future. Poor Melissa McCarthy is
left with very little to do and Naomi Watts as a Russian stripper is saddled
with an accent that is somehow worse than the deliberately silly Kermit clone
in Muppets Most Wanted.
The tone of the film has the same issue as Murray’s Monuments Men from earlier this year, in
that it can’t decide on one: we swing from dark and upsetting moments – Vincent
visiting his wife in a retirement home as her mind slowly slips away – to indie-inspired
schmaltzy interludes – Vincent and Oliver driving down the highway swinging
ice-cream cones in the air to an over-zealous plucking of guitars on the
soundtrack or Chris O’Dowd doing his usual shtick as the R.E. teacher.
Annoyingly, the predictably schmaltzy bits are actually pretty good and rather
enjoyably framed, whilst everything around them is either misjudged or
snooze-worthy.
Just about propped up by Murray, St. Vincent is a film spoiled entirely by its own publicity and the
sparseness of good laughs. Melfi – who has previously only worked with short
films – needs to go back to that, because as well as he can handle individual
moments, he doesn’t have a handle on features at all. It’s ten minutes too long,
one lead too many and a too many laughs shy of a decent comedy.
★★☆☆☆
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