Review: Weirdness rules Posey, Moore's Tears
Review: Weirdness rules Posey, Moore's Tears
Review: Weirdness rules Posey, Moore's Tears
Mitchell Lichtenstein
Demi Moore, Parker Posey, Rip Torn, Ellen Barkin
That indie-film specialty, the comic drama about dysfunctional family reunions, has come to this: Parker Posey and Demi Moore cleaning up after Rip Torn's poo.
In Happy Tears, Posey and Moore manage a handful of nice scenes capturing an authentic sense of siblings grown far apart, yet who still know each other almost as well as they know themselves.
But then writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein makes this sister act change dad's underwear and scrub his soiled butt as part of the ritual of reconnecting with family matters they thought they had left behind.
And sadly, that's one of the more ordinary things that goes on as Posey's pampered Jayne and Moore's stalwart Laura return to the house they grew up in to tend their father, Joe (Torn), a crusty crank slipping into dementia.
This is not your family or anyone's you're likely to know, and here are a few reasons why:
See anyone you recognize? These are not people. These a filmmaker's conceits.
The movie coughs up the usual helpings of old wounds, false memories and bitter revelations as Jayne and Laura come to terms with Joe's decline and their anger over his philandering treatment of their saintly mother.
In some ways, this second feature film from Lichtenstein is weirder than his first, 2007's Teeth, a twisted little female-empowerment romp about an abstinence-obsessed teen who discovers she has a toothed vagina that can put the bite on men.
Teeth left an impression, at least. With Happy Tears, Lichtenstein feeds us bizarre people behaving like wackos, seemingly to show us that even bizarre people behaving like wackos can function, sort of, in the real world.
The movie aims for that happy-sad sweet zone where joy and sorrow mingle and coalesce into something that sends viewers away thinking this was a film that got life right.
It's really hard to do, but Happy Tears doesn't even come close.
Happy Tears, a Roadside Attractions release, is rated R for language, drug use, and some sexual content including brief nudity. Running time: 96 minutes.
