ST VINCENT
DIRECTOR: Theodore Melfi
CAST: Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Chris O’Dowd, Jaeden Lieberher, Terrence Howard
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LSD
RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes
RATING: ****
IF IT wasn’t for Bill Murray injecting his caustic side into this film it would be unbearably saccharine and schmaltzy.
Thankfully, he embraces his role as a hard-drinking, curmudgeon of a gambler with a pregnant Russian stripper girlfriend, a broken fence and huge debt to settle. Thus he saves the film from sentimental overload and turns it into a fine character study, supported by some mildly interesting characters.
After all, this is one of the few Hollywood luminaries who would not only have the courage to star opposite a cute fluffy cat and an even cuter kid, and dare to think he will come out on top. And, by and large he does, simply by not injecting any sort of sentimentality into his role as Vincent, the stubborn hedonist next door.
Melissa McCarthy for once plays it straight as harassed mother, Maggie, trying her hardest to make a go of her new life in expensive New York as a single caregiver to her scrawny little kid, Oliver (Lieberher).
Against her better judgement, she asks her new neighbour Vincent to babysit Oliver, who forms an unlikely bond with the old guy who takes him to bars and the racetrack and teaches him how to fight.
Despite what other people see as rather unbecoming behaviour on the part of Vincent, Oliver starts to see the older man for who he really is, noticing with a child’s clarity how Vincent strives to do good despite his flaws.
Naomi Watts is almost unrecognisable under the bleached hair, baby bump and broad Russian accent, while Chris O’Dowd sticks to his own Irish accent as Oliver’s darkly funny teacher, Brother Geraghty.
Murray creates a crabby old man who lives as he pleases, beholden to no one, but at the same time not willing to offload his problems onto others. Observant, clever Oliver sees through the cynicism to the person underneath, noticing the vulnerability and, above all, humanity in the old man. Lieberher is a natural, simply being a self-aware kid instead of acting all cute-sy.
Oliver’s habit of simply cutting to the chase offsets Vincent’s elaborately bad behaviour every time and we slowly start to see what the child sees.
There are moments of deadpan humour and witty lines and the touch of realism on how getting old is not for the faint-hearted, injects a welcome note of realism into the story.
St Vincent is a feel-good film that manages not to sink too deeply into mawkish territory, simply because Murray very ably strikes the balance between cantankerous caricature and real person.
The film is very much a vehicle for Murray to show his stuff, but when his stuff is of this high calibre, we do not mind at all. It is not that the Vincent character is any different at the end than he was in the beginning, it is just that now we see more of him because we also see him through Oliver’s eyes and we suddenly see a more vastly complex person.
If you liked Broken Flowers or Lost in Translation you will like this.