Boundaries

Boundaries is a film about members of a dysfunctional family making a road trip to epiphany. It's like a lot of others you may have seen in recent years (such as Little Miss Sunshine and The Leisure Seeker) and some you probably haven't (such as 2017's Youth in Oregon, which had Frank Langella's grown-up children reluctantly ferrying him across the country for purposes of assisted suicide).

While it isn't particularly original, Boundaries features some actors that are enjoyable to spend time with, including wonderful Vera Farmiga, who a few years ago seemed poised to become a bigger star than she has, and Christopher Plummer, who has aged as finely as cognac, acquiring a soft patina over his icy core. He's evolved from a cold fishy sort of actor -- the priggish Capt. Von Trapp -- to a North American treasure, both the oldest Academy Award acting winner and nominee, having won for Best Supporting Actor at age 82 for Beginners (2010) and having received a nomination at 88 for All the Money in the World, where he stepped in to save the production after Kevin Spacey was caught up in sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations.

Here he's alternately curmudgeonly and debonair, a swank old charmer with criminal mischief in his eye. (How did Capt. Von Trapp -- a role Plummer described as "so awful and sentimental and gooey" -- transform into such a beloved rascal?)

She is Laura, divorced, with an angst-bit teenage son Henry (15-year-old Scottish actor Lewis MacDougall) with a knack for drawing rude caricatures. He is Jack, an 88-year-old incorrigible, recently evicted from his nursing home for dealing pot.

They are an estranged daughter and father, although she has a sense of humor about it. When he calls, her phone whoops and "Do Not Pick Up" appears on the caller I.D.

But pick up she does, because that's what characters do in the movies, and she soon finds herself agreeing to drive Jack and his vintage Rolls-Royce down the West Coast to hand him off to her sister JoJo (ever enjoyable Kristen Schaal) in Los Angeles. Since Henry has just been expelled from his school he can come too. And among the quirks bad parenting has bequeathed to Laura is a pathological need to rescue animals, so several stray dogs join them on their journey, which takes the usual detours and switchbacks, some (but not all) related to Jack's covert plan to unload $200,000 worth of his remaining weed.

This allows for the introduction of a few sketchy characters who are given heft by the actors who play them -- including Christopher Lloyd as a sweet art forger and Peter Fonda as a constantly vaping hipster and Bobby Cannavale as Laura's ex-husband who feels like a chip off the old Jack. All sorts of boundaries are tested and violated, but the film ends, as you know it must, on a determinedly upbeat note.

Shana Feste, the writer-director of the film, has said she based it in part on her experiences with her father, and it does have the ring of truth in its haphazard, shambling way. Some of the lines knuckle toward you, keeping you off-balance. Others unfortunately feel rote and standard, like so much obligatory boilerplate. But it's a far stronger film than her previous efforts, the 2010 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Country Strong or the 2014 remake of Endless Love.

Boundaries deserves better than it has gotten -- if you've heard anything about the movie it's probably about how Fonda's unfortunate tweet about Barron and Melania Trump on the eve of its release prompted talk of a boycott. Sony Pictures Classic released a statement condemning the tweet, which Fonda took down, but they kept him in the picture.

I'm not sure that was wise, especially when they had Plummer right there.

MovieStyle on 08/17/2018