If there’s nothing more exhilarating in a movie theater than finding a wonderful film where you didn’t expect, then little is more depressing than walking out let down by a movie you had awaited with enthusiasm. Such was the case for me and “Ricki and the Flash.”
I think Meryl Streep is the finest actor working in film today, and operate under the general assumption that having her in the cast makes anything worth the price of admission. And while “Ricki” certainly isn’t a bad flick, it’s got too many obvious problems in its structure and execution to ever had a chance at being good.
Streep plays a woman who ran out on her family decades ago to pursue her rock ‘n’ roll dreams on the West Coast. She never made it big, but continues to entertain at night while working days as a checkout clerk. Then Ricki gets the call that her daughter, Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep’s real-life kid), is in a bad way after a terrible breakup.
You can’t go home again, at least not without stirring up old heartbreak, as Ricki discovers in a by-the-numbers trip through resentment and buried longing. The screenplay by Diablo Cody takes a “kitchen sink” approach, lobbing in all sorts of distracting sub-characters and side plots.
The main dynamic between mother and daughter gets lost, and Julie actually disappears for most of the second half. Kevin Kline is poorly used as Ricki’s ex-husband, a diffident but decent fellow who’s moved on from a shattered love life but still feels some warmth toward her.
Throw in the gay son’s coming out, the other son’s wedding, Ricki’s scratchy romance with her lead guitarist (Rick Springfield) and a face-off with her children’s stepmother, and there’s just too many notes in this cacophonous arrangement. And director Jonathan Demme can’t find a consistent tone amidst the chaos.
Streep’s great as always, but “Ricki and the Flash” gets the primary chords wrong.
Video extras are middling. The DVD comes with a making-through documentary, and that’s it. The Blu-ray adds deleted scenes, a photo gallery and a featurette on Springfield’s reemergence as a rock icon and actor.
More people bought tickets for “Fifty Shades of Grey” on its 17th day in release than did for “The End of the Tour” during its entire theatrical run. We get the cinema we deserve, people.
This amazing film, one of the year’s best, is the story of two young writers who connect and clash in 1996. David Foster Wallace has just published his novel “Infinite Jest” to great acclaim. David Lipsky is interviewing him for Rolling Stone magazine, at his own insistence.
As introverted men of similar backgrounds who live through their words, there is a natural affinity between them, but also a large potential for antipathy. Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), whose own novel has just flopped, envies Wallace for his success. Every question he puts forward seems to have the unspoken addendum, “Why you and not me?”
Wallace – played by Jason Segel, in a career-changing performance – is defensive, outwardly shy but with an iron inner core of ego. He can’t stand the idea of somebody else drafting the narrative that will define him. He senses Lipsky’s resentment, and responds with indignation.
It’s the story of two guys who, in other circumstances, might have become best of friends but are nudged toward hostility by professional jealousy and circumstance. Looming over it all is the weight of knowledge about Wallace’s death in 2008 by suicide, which acts as a framing device for the story.
If you don’t think 106 minutes of essentially nothing more than two guys talking can’t be exhilarating, then prepare to be shocked. “The End of the Tour” deserves our attention.
Bonus features are quite good, anchored by a feature-length audio commentary track by director James Ponsoldt, screenwriter Donald Margulies and Segel. Though the absence of Eisenberg nettles, the best commentaries come when all three legs of the core creative triad – writing, acting, directing – are represented.
There are also deleted scenes, an interview with composer Danny Elfman and a making-of documentary short. Extras are the same for DVD and Blu-ray versions.
“The End of the Tour” is simultaneously a great character study and possibly the best portrait of writers I’ve ever seen.
It’s essentially a two-person conversation that takes place over the course of five days in 1996. Both are youngish men who have recently published books. One is famous, the other is not. The less celebrated one is writing a profile of the famous one for Rolling Stone magazine while he finishes up his book tour.
They grow friendly, but jealousy and resentment are always close at hand. They circle each other warily, tribal companions and combatants harboring their own stakes and agendas. Theirs is a magnificent, haunting dance of intellects and emotions.
David Foster Wallace is the celebrated novelist, whose “Infinite Jest” has just been released to spectacular acclaim and predictions of major awards. His dense, playful style of writing, replete with extensive endnotes and citations, seemed a precursor to today’s hyperlinked, hyperactive style of information consumption.
He plays up his regular-guy image, teaching at an unremarkable Illinois state college, wearing bandanas and hanging out with his slobbering dogs and select friends. Wallace killed himself in 2008 at age 46.
David Lipsky is the interviewer, a few years younger and whose own novel, “The Art Fair,” has been much more modestly received. An early scene shows him reciting at a sparsely-attended book reading, so later when he looks out over the packed room for Wallace’s final book tour appearance, we understand how that stiffens his spine.
In Wallace, Lipsky beholds someone more accomplished and wants to capture that, understand it, and thereby ensure his own ascent.
Director James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”) and screenwriter Donald Margulies reveal many things about both men in “The End of the Tour,” but also hold back in other ways. For instance, Wallace never produced another novel while alive. (An unfinished work was published posthumously.) He mostly turned to nonfiction and essays, even penning for Rolling Stone.
Meanwhile, Lipsky’s article was never actually published in the magazine. The interview essentially became memories and a box of old tape recordings. Lipsky dug them out after Wallace’s passing and turned it into the book, “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” upon which this movie is based.
Jason Segel plays Wallace. Yes, that Jason Segel – the pants-dropping comic everyman of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and TV’s “How I Met Your Mother.” If you can’t conceive of him giving a layered, dramatic turn, just remember that many funnymen have gone on to become serious actors. I believe this film will do for Segel what “Moscow on the Hudson” did for Robin Williams.
It’s a career-changing, stand-up-and-take-notice kind of performance.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Lipsky. It’s a tight, precise portrayal, the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from the actor from “The Social Network.” His Lipsky is nebbishy and charming, sort of a modern-day Woody Allen type. He’s ambitious and can be ruthless when pushed, but he genuinely likes Wallace and wants to get inside his head.
Plot-wise, the story essentially just follows Lipsky as he follows Wallace to Minneapolis for the last leg of his book tour. They spend almost every minute together, driving in cars, riding in planes, hanging in the downtime. Lipsky keeps his recorder going the whole time, an old-style cassette job with an oversized microphone, one of which every journalist of a certain age probably has stashed somewhere. The tape machine becomes a virtual third character, an omnipresent reminder that their conversations are “on the record” and posterity is listening.
The men talk about writing, depression, addiction, sex, television, having kids, the intangible appeal of Alanis Morissette and other topics. It’s fascinating to watch the tidal ebb and flow of trust, as Wallace starts out very reticent to reveal himself, then slowly opens up, only to recede back into himself when he starts to think Lipsky is playing him.
And Lipsky is playing him -- from a journalistic perspective. He peeks into the guy’s medicine cabinet and writes down the contents, makes notes after a middle-of-the-night heartfelt conversation, and declines to order an alcoholic beverage because, he tells Wallace, he respects the 12-step process. It’s Lipsky’s way of letting Wallace know he knows about past substance abuse problems.
These are the sorts of things reporters routinely do as part of the job that outsiders would doubtless regard as monumentally crummy. Intrusive? You just defined journalism.
Better than any film I can think of, “The End of the Tour” captures and crystallizes what it’s like to be inside the head of people who live through words. Eisenberg and Segel are magnificent conduits into the writer’s darkest corners.
That may be seem a strange criticism for a movie about a rock star. (Well, a rock musician, anyway.) But that was my main takeaway from "Ricki and the Flash": it spends way too much time with Meryl Streep and her eponymous band doing covers of (mostly) classic rock songs.
We all know how it goes with musical montages: the band will start playing, the scene will build energy as the song rises, the high point is the chorus, and then movie cuts away to a series of images that let us know they kept playing, but they're not going to show all of it. Director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Diablo Cody don't do this: we hear the whole song from beginning to end, just about every time.
The would be fine if the five, six minutes or whatever of song propelled the plot and advanced the characters. Or if it was just good to listen to. But the complete tunes seem more like an excuse to let Streep stroke her ego and play rock god. And, frankly, Ricki and the Flash sound like what they are: a third-string cover band. We know Streep can sing pop ballads and folk music from other movies, but here she's trying to do that husky-voiced rock voice, and it's just not her bag.
They're going for Bonnie Raitt, but it sounds like Meryl Streep after gargling Wild Turkey and thumb tacks.
Ricki bailed on her Indianapolis family a quarter-century ago or so to pursue her rock 'n' roll dreams in Los Angeles. She never made it but never left, spending days as a cashier at Total Foods while working the Salt Well bar as the house band for the aging clientele who want a little shake with their suds.
Then Ricki gets a call from her former husband, Pete (an ill-used Kevin Kline): their daughter Julie has just been dumped by her husband and is in an emotional spin. Pete's second wife, Maureen, is off dealing with her own family problems. Can Ricki (real name: Linda) come back and be a mother to her kids again?
Things play out much as you'd expect. The children -- they also have two sons -- are stupendously resentful of the parent who walked out on them so long ago. There's a lot of screaming and recrimination at first. But slowly, Ricki starts to ease her way back into their lives.
As usual, Streep is the best thing about whatever movie she's in. Her Ricki is frayed and strained, riddled with guilt but also justifiably proud of the fact that rolled the dice on her dreams. She sports a weird braided hairdo, omnipresent necklaces and makeup that looks like it was applied with a bricklayer's trowel. Everywhere she goes, people stop and stare.
Julie is played by Streep's real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer, and it's no small thing for a movie to feature people playing relatives who actually resemble each other. Their early scenes together crackle with energy. Julie has become despondent and suicidal, with a convincing rat's nest hairdo and lips curling with ready insults for her wayward mom.
Cody, who took Hollywood by storm with her script for "Juno" and then has been unable to follow up with anything approaching it, goes for the kitchen sink approach to story construction. Just Ricki coming home, healing the rift with her daughter and negotiating a dance around old resentments with her ex is enough. But then Cody throws in other entanglements: her son's pending marriage; her other son's coming out; her bandmate and bedmate (a soulful Rick Springfield) desiring something more concrete; the stepmom (Audra McDonald) returning just in time to lay down the law and ruin the party.
Characters and subplots dance in and out of the foreground, some staying too long and others exiting the stage too soon. The emotionally resonant reunion between mother and daughter gets sort of... misplaced. Julie literally disappears for most of the second half. Wasn't she the entire reason for Ricki's homecoming?
I admit I had been eagerly looking forward to this movie, and came away disappointed. It's not a bad flick by any stretch, and I'm of the opinion that anything with Streep is worth the price of admission. Ricki comes into clear focus, but everything around her stays fuzzy.
