Other People 2016

Other People 2016

TVMA - 97 min

The setting is passively aggressive Sacramento.  The full-sized family are all played by great actors, the casting was perfectly done, and the laugh breaks are at all the right points, like the dinner scene where all is serious, yet in chimes Molly Shannon with a near-SNL line that ends the scene, so we're still smiling though it all.  It is, in fact, a very poignant vision of the loss of a parent, and one who loves much.

 

The film is technically about a woman who gets cancer and how it affects the entire family.  All the obligatory stages and scenes are there that make for a great emotional fictional take on a very real subject.  So it's a drama, described on IMDB as "revelatory".  IMO this is meant to be said with an air of snottiness.

 

Well, usually the major amount of screen time is centered around the real main character of course, or pair of characters at the very most.  Great.  But it's not Molly Shannon.  The real story that is woven into almost every scene is that of David, played by Jesse Plemons (of noted Breaking Bad cast, along with many prominent roles over the last few years).  The acting by Plemons, and the direction of Chris Kelly are what drive this story to that side of it's teeter totter. 

 

This is not one of those works that lacks maturity, as the label says.  It is OTT maturity, in your face maturity, homosexual love maturity, with quite a few boyfriends in the mix.  AND...as many scenes of David with every-day people in every-day situations, humility, frailty, vulnerability, and insecurity.   We have the young boy that is a cross dresser at age possibly 11?  He throws himself in front of the whole family in a display of dressing the part, and a younger sister that represents the lesbian community.  We also have to have the stereotypical father figure that cannot tolerate the idea of his son being a man lover, and then we see him rendered powerless in the end. 

 

"Other People"  is the term aptly used in the story for whom we suppose these things, like cancer, happen.  This film is a tossing together of a formulaic and otherwise normative story line structure, yet juxtaposed over the top of it is that thick layer of fudge which is the writer/director's dream goal.  The entire presentation here is a Sundae.

 

I'm seeing this as opportunistic.  You take a well-hashed genre of "parent dying of cancer" and apply a Genenda to it, which can stand for Gay Agenda as much as it also stands for Gender Agenda.  It's like painting a suit of clothes with latex paint before you go out so you can have exactly the shade you desire.  The suit is still the same, and now is lacquered with a new color.  It is, of course, acceptable procedure to do so as almost every theme available has been presented in many different ways, but we just want to be clear about what is being painted.  In times past, we've seen classic stories turned into XRated material, like the XRated version of Cinderella for instance.

 

This is Boiling Frog material, a part of the progressively aggressive "code of inclusion" that dampens the grass in the Hollywood hills. Concerning codes...

 

Did you know that on even a lower-than-average set in the motion picture industry you can have an entire scene ready to shoot, the cameras are ready to start rolling, the slate person is there, the lights are trimmed exactly, and we're waiting for...the electrical staff member who is necessary under the Union rules to be there to throw a particular switch that no one else can switch besides them.  But...he's on the roof smoking a doobie with someone.  Said Union Electrical Worker would  have a hard time getting fired for it as well, meaning not for the weed, but missing his assignment and creating a massive delay.  Yep, the new rules are getting carved in to the system.

 

 

So we'd have to conclude then that if catering to the new normal in Hollywood of "leveling all playing fields for equality's sake" were the goal here, then this film has definitely pushed...uh, I mean done that.


- Agitatus