Review

The Hollars

Brothers John (John Krasinski) and Ron (Sharlto Copley) are comforted by Rev. Dan (Josh Groban) in The Hollars, a quirky independent comedy directed by Krasinski.
Brothers John (John Krasinski) and Ron (Sharlto Copley) are comforted by Rev. Dan (Josh Groban) in The Hollars, a quirky independent comedy directed by Krasinski.

There's a distressingly familiar feel to John Krasinski's The Hollars, a film that might be most useful as a demonstration of what people mean when they call something a "Sundance dramedy." It's yet another quirky story about an artistic young man who -- having achieved escape velocity and migrated from his quaintly goofy/stultifying small hometown for the big city -- finds himself called homeward on a mission and must deal with his dysfunctional family, a clan that we are given to believe is very unlike our hero.

In this case, our hero, John Hollar, is played by the director (though Krasinski was attached to the film as an actor before taking over as producer and director). He is a graphic novelist not quite making it in New York with his pregnant girlfriend, Rebecca (Anna Kendrick). He's summoned back to Ohio by his father Don (the always dependable Richard Jenkins) and hapless older brother, Ron (Sharlto Copley), when his mother, Sally (Margo Martindale), is diagnosed with a brain tumor.

The Hollars

83 Cast: John Krasinski, Margo Martindale, Richard Jenkins, Sharlto Copley, Anna Kendrick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Josh Groban, Mary Kay Place

Director: John Krasinski

Rating: PG-13, for language and thematic material

Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes

The prognosis is not good and the family dynamic is complicated by the guilt the emotionally vulnerable Don feels at not having recognized his wife's symptoms earlier. Count this as one of the reasons his plumbing business is foundering. Ron, recently divorced, has retreated to his parents' basement where he obsesses over his ex-wife and their two daughters.

Meanwhile John's high school crush Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), whom he has never quite gotten over, is still around -- and she's married to insecure, obnoxious Jason (Charlie Day), the nurse who just happens to be the terminal Sally's primary caregiver.

For her part, Sally is prepared to face the worst, with the sort of sagacious, crusty equanimity that the doomed often acquire in the movies, but Martindale is a good enough actor to transcend the trope -- when they come to shave her head she mildly protests that the procedure will "make her look like Rod Steiger." The joke works because, well, it kind of does.

The whole cast (excepting poor Day, stuck in a caricature too broad to mitigate) does fair to excellent work, even as Jim Strouse's screenplay veers wildly in tone from affecting realism -- the scenes between Krasinski and Martindale are especially good -- to improbably wackiness.

Still, it's a brisk and generally harmless affair, populated by over-qualified actors. It's a forgettable movie, but a mildly enjoyable one.

MovieStyle on 09/23/2016

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