In The Estate, politically incorrect humor is alive but not well
Toni Collette, Anna Faris, and David Duchovny fight for Kathleen Turner's fortune in Dean Craig's mediocre farce
Film Reviews David Duchovny
If The Estate is a farce, and it tries—if not hard enough—to be one, where does that leave classic examples of the form like La Cage Aux Folles, The Producers, or It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World? Well, still comfortably above The Estate. The film, directed by Death At A Funeral screenwriter Dean Craig, has a promising central idea: a group of estranged cousins jockey to please their dying aunt to become the beneficiary of her will. It has all the ingredients of a farce, where increasingly desperate characters navigate an improbable, roadblock-filled situation at an energetic pace.
The execution is where it’s lacking: the wit, the timing, the headlong comic drive, and the ability to make us laugh at actions and dialogue that, in any other context, would be rude or distasteful. The one thing The Estate does exceptionally well is waste a terrific cast that includes Toni Collette, David Duchovny, and Kathleen Turner. Otherwise, this is an oddly lifeless and often misjudged collection of crude ideas and off-color jokes that comes at a time when we need to be reminded that crude ideas and off-color jokes can be the stuff of great comedy.
The Estate establishes its irreverent tone with an early colostomy bag scene, and then ends with a bit featuring an old man’s penis hanging out of his pants. This gives the film very little comedic build since the comedy knob is turned to 11 way too soon. Both the colostomy bag and the penis are in the unfortunate hands of Macey (the ever-versatile Collette). She and her sister Savanna (a grating Anna Faris) have just arrived at the tony New Orleans mansion of their Aunt Hilda, a detestable old broad dying of cancer. She’s played by Turner, whose smoky voice, once the stuff of dreams, has congealed into a wonderfully cantankerous rasp. Macey and Savanna haven’t seen Hilda in years, but their coffee shop is facing foreclosure, so their plan is to ingratiate themselves with their miserable aunt so she’ll leave them her fortune. Macey’s first test is to empty Hilda’s colostomy bag, a gag that Dean does nothing with, other than put us on notice that anything can happen. But really, it only signals that very little here will live up to its potential.
Turns out Macey and Savanna aren’t the only gold-digging family members descending on Hilda’s home. Their cousin Beatrice has already settled in and scored major ass-kissing points with her ornery aunt. The domineering Beatrice is played by Rosemarie DeWitt with an array of side glances and sneers that faintly echo the great screwball comedy actresses of Old Hollywood. The final cousin to arrive is Robert (Duchovny, riding a fun, douchebag vibe). He prefers to be called Dick which, in his case, is both a noun and an adjective. A fashion embarrassment and a lousy entrepreneur, Dick is in pole position for Hilda’s loot, showering her with compliments, flowers, and a Chantilly cake. He also harbors a long-standing crush on Macey, and has “done extensive research” on the internet about cousins sleeping together.
Craig’s script is filled with tasteless situations that seem less intent on being funny than on proving to the world that comedy has no boundaries in these cancel-filled times. It’s a point well-taken, but an argument poorly made when the jokes and the energy are so flat and no amount of up-tempo cues in Will Bates’ undistinguished, percussive score can goose the proceedings to farcical levels.
One wonders what the Farrelly Brothers, during the pair’s There’s Something About Mary prime, would have done with Macey, Beatrice, and Dick scrambling to be the first to get Hilda laid. Craig’s idea, which is structurally sound but wanting for solid laughs, involves successfully tracking down Hilda’s high school crush, Bill (Danny Vinson, holding his own nicely against the starry cast) who’s now a sweaty and shambling registered sex offender. Some audiences may chafe when, later, Macey and Savanna’s Dungeons And Dragons-loving younger sister, Ellen (Curb Your Enthusiasm’s very funny Keyla Monterroso Mejia) is cajoled into acting as bait for the perverted Bill.
For those people, there are many, many classic comedies they will never have the pleasure of watching. But the irony here is that Craig’s soft directorial touch ensures that we never feel we’re in transgressive territory. The film throws off no sense of danger (see: To Be Or Not To Be) nor does it gleefully wallow in its political incorrectness (see: Blazing Saddles). Its light indulgences in sentimentality, as when the cousins decide to work together, or when Macey questions her mercenary actions, are tossed off and unconvincing concessions to a genre that works best when it’s shamelessly unapologetic.
As comedies like Bad Santa, Sausage Party, and Team America: World Police have proven, audiences will embrace unlikeable characters or a story filled with vulgar ideas as long as they’re laughing. And as plays like Noises Off have proven, successful farces are delicate structures where timing and build are crucial. The Estate isn’t up to the challenge and is, instead, content to flounder in that middle ground, as an undercooked comedy of ill-manners that wants credit for “going there” without us feeling like any lines were crossed. It’s a shame given its game cast, but, as Joe E. Brown said to Jack Lemmon at the end of Some Like It Hot, one of the all-time great farces, “nobody’s perfect.”
26 Comments
You don’t think Anna Faris is terrific? You mentioned a terrific cast and mentioned everyone but Anna Faris. I think she’s terrific. And the Wild Ones think she’s terrific. And the Beetles think she’s terrific. We all think she’s terrific.
I, too, noticed her omission, but a few lines later she appears as “Anna Faris, grating,” so there you have it. I think she’s a gem.
Anna Faris is physically incapable of being grating. Does not compute.
Come to think of it; if I got the choice, she can hold my colostomy bag any day.
Even if she effed up cleaning out my colostomy bag and gagged the whole time, she’d still be a cutie patootie.
<3 <3 <3
Yeah, obviously I comment sentence-by-sentence. How grating.
New on AVClub: live commenting, provided by The Kinja Caffeine Spider.
*blush* sometimes I do my work.
anyone who describes Faris as grating is going to get some serious side eye from me. I’ve never not been delighted by her, even in mediocre roles. And her podcast is one of the least prescriptive ones out there.
First thing I noticed too. Must be an overweight female reviewer with pink bangs.
I’d put my colostomy bag and penis in the ever-versatile hands of Macey Collette.
where it’s lacking: the wit, the timing, the headlong comic drive, and the ability to make us laugh at actions and dialogue that, in any other context, would be rude or distastefulSpeaking of which, perhaps it’s about time for a reappraisal of Death at a Funeral.
I love all of these actors (esp Kathleen Turner and the perpetually underrated Anna Faris) and I love a dark comedy. I’m bummed that this isn’t worth watching.
it’s just a guide. i watched the trailer and it looked right up my alley, so i’m in.
When I was a much younger person I had a serious crush on Kathleen Turner due to the film “Romancing the Stone” — Sure, I was 12 at the time, but I’m certain that she would have been fine with it had we met.
Having just seen Romancing The Stone for the first time a few months ago, a crush on Kathleen Turner is perfectly understandable, maybe even expected.(And then Jewel Of The Nile after that…. well, Turner was still good, even if the movie wasn’t)
My favorite thing about Romancing the Stone is that the whole soundtrack is basically just one song, just played at different speeds to kind of half-fit whatever’s going on:It’s like they spent half the budget on locations, the other half on Douglas, Turner, and De Vito, and then just recorded the upbeat music from the office elevator and called it a day.
I found this quite funny, particularly Duchovny as Richard (Robert? Seriously, do you just not have proofreaders anymore?), because he kept escalating his creep factor. The fun is that all of the members of the family are assholes, with Collette as the only slightly redeemable one, and they all play to the extremes. And poor Ron Livingston. The paces he’s put through as Rosemarie DeWitt’s husband had the whole audience guffawing. The only downside for me was Gichi Gamba as Geoff, but only because he’s limited to a handful of scenes and only has one note to his character. He could have probably done more, but he only exists to humanize Macey. Apart from that, though, I and everyone else in the theatre last night were laughing pretty much the whole way. Kathleen Turner was especially great, reacting to all the shitbaggery going on while being the biggest shitbag (figuratively and literally thanks to the colostomy) of them all.
“Seriously, do you just not have proofreaders anymore?”They do not have proofreaders, or editors anymore. Avclub no longer publishes proper articles, the writers just slap up blog posts. The current avclub writers are absolute hacks but it’s not entirely their fault, that horrible arrangement is dictated by the incompotent management.
Does anyone know what happened to the respectable writers they used to have here pre-Kinja, like Ignatiy Vishnevetsky? I’d like to think he earned his tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, and is now happily settled in Vermont, teaching English at a community college or something like that.
See, I thought the joke was that his full name was Robert but he preferred Dick as a nickname, even though Dick isn’t typically a derivation of Robert. But watching the trailer, no, looks like you were right, just an uncorrected typo. I may have given this movie too much credit assuming that there was a funny joke in it.
It’s really good, I hope it has a good effect
“He prefers to be called Dick which, in his case, is both a noun and an adjective.”Dickish would be the adjective— I understand what that sentence means, but it would be better written as “both a nickname and a descriptor” or something along those lines. Normally I’m not the grammar police (as evidenced by my terrible writing in general) but for some reason I must correct the appropriate parts of speech for “dick.”
I leave that work for Volunteer Proofreader. It’s the one kind of comment they are most qualified to write.
This is as good a time as any to remind people that Greedy exists. It’s roughly the same premise, with a great cast, that only really stumbles when it tries to get serious and focuses less on the scheming relatives.It’s worth watch alone for Phil Hartman.