Courtney Howard // Film Critic
SHE CAME TO ME
Rated R, 102 minutes
Directed by: Rebecca Miller
Starring: Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, Anne Hathaway, Joanna Kulig, Brian d’Arcy James, Harlow Jane, Evan A. Ellison
In life and in cinema, there’s too much of a good thing and then there’s just too much. Filmmaker Rebecca Miller’s SHE CAME TO ME fits the latter description. Containing at least three disparate plot lines with only one of them passing as mediocre, she turns in a feature that’s simultaneously underdeveloped and overcooked. It makes for a frustrating viewing experience seeing an exceptional cast go to total waste on convoluted, contrived material. It’s bafflingly awful and not at all the movie that’s being advertised – one centered on an uptight composer with writer’s block who meets his muse and comedic chaos ensues. That’s only part of the story.
Opera composer Steven Lauddem (Peter Dinklage) is currently having a rough go at life. It’s been five years since his last successful show, where, shortly thereafter, he fell into a deep depression and married his shrink Patricia (Anne Hathaway). He’s been suffering from crippling cases of anxiety and writer’s block, dodging investors and friends eagerly awaiting his next masterpiece. His wife too is dealing with a neurosis of her own, rebuffing his verbal request for unscheduled sex, dealing with pesky patients who imagine her nude and feeling an onset of a mid-life crisis. Patricia’s 18-year-old son Julian (Evan Ellison) is the only grounded one in the house, doing great in school and experiencing a healthy romantic relationship with 16-year-old girlfriend Tereza (Harlow Jane).
Their lives, however, are all thrown into balance right around the time Steven finally finds his creative muse – tugboat captain Katrina (Marisa Tomei) – in a Brooklyn bar. She’s seductive and has a wild life-story Steven finds so entrancing that, with a little ingenuity and artistic license, he turns his experience with her into a hit opera. It’s then when Patricia, rather randomly, begins feeling she’s being called to become a nun. Julian unwittingly finds his future personal and professional prospects put into jeopardy after Tereza’s cleaning lady mother Magdalena (Joanna Kulig) finds a box of sexy Polaroids featuring her daughter under his bed. Not only does this upset her, but it enrages her racist stenographer/ Civil War re-enactor boyfriend Trey (Brian d’Arcy James), who adopted Tereza and can’t handle her burgeoning womanhood. He threatens to sue Julian for statutory rape.
If your head is spinning reading this, just think of how your mind would reel watching these things transpire on screen. Miller’s picture experiences far too many wild tonal shifts and lacks the finesse in bringing them all together in a satisfactory way. As is, each of these tangential, emotionally disjointed and hollow storylines are birthed from half-formed ideas. Patricia’s impending nervous breakdown is uninteresting and unfunny – twee quirk for quirk sake. Trey’s retaliatory lawsuit to label Julian sexual predator comes out of nowhere, giving the film a hacky, melodramatic afterschool special feel. Miller’s narrative seems intent to point out that children think clearly about love, treating it with more respect than adults do, mucking it up with unnecessary complications, egos and ambitions. While that sentiment is assuredly there, she utterly fails in creating compelling characters to deliver that message with a whisper rather than a scream.
It’s a joy to see Dinklage as a romcom leading man. His dry wit and magnetic presence are one of the film’s highlights. I hope in the future a more suitably skilled filmmaker will write him that role he richly deserves, because this one sadly ain’t it. Tomei also makes for a terrific screen partner. Yet these stars’ shine is constantly dulled due to the demands of poor direction and maddening scenarios. The film lacks greatly in energy, vibrancy and coherence when it loses focus on their story. Hathaway and James are wasted in their respective roles.
While, with a little more craft and care, this could serve as a comedic, shenanigan-laced treatise on the creative process, Miller’s intentions are muddled and watered down. Even an original closing credits song by Bruce Springsteen (“Addicted to Romance”) can’t help buoy this one. Don’t let her come to you.
Grade: 1.5 out of 5
SHE CAME TO ME is now playing in theaters.
