Melissa McCarthy is an innately likeable actress. She’s done enough genuinely good comedies in her career to secure her place in the comedic pantheon and she’s done plenty of duds that her popularity has seen her bounce back from unscathed. And then she finally went and did that thing most comedic actors do at some juncture and made a drama. And lo and behold, she was very good at it. Can You ever Forgive Me is by all accounts a good and well-acted drama and a terrific showcase for McCarthy to stretch her acting muscles.
So much so that presumably she wanted to do it again and the thing she chose is…this sh*te. And mind you, Starling is on some level an equivalent of McCarthy’s lesser comedies, it’s the same trite and hokey crap with a different (sadder) tone. It goes like this…McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd are a married couple whose baby dies. The wife recovers and the husband just doesn’t. He tried to kill himself and ends up in posh loony bin recovery facility. And the entire movie is just about them finding their way back to each other. So not much meat on those bones, instead the movie heavily relies on the easy charm of its leads and a sort of heartstring puppeteering that you usually get out of Lifetime movies, modern pop country songs, etc. In fact, the entire soundtrack is an oversentimental pop country tedium that pretty much informs you how to feel at any given time. Now we’re sad, people, we a really sad. Oh…look, a glimpse of hope. Get with it, everyone. The entre thing is overwrought and twee and emotionally manipulative and it’s all very cheap. A cheap play at sentimentality. Nothing about the movie, not even the famous McCarthy charm makes you forget it. Not does it ever distract you from how implausible this entire soggy teary mess it. McCarthy is 51. O’Dowd is miraculously only 41, though you’d never know by looking at him. This is a mind-blowing reversal of the Hollywood 15 scenario, but also both stars look way, way too old to have their first baby. Also, O’Dowd’s character is a suicidal prone depressive, how has he made a career out of working with kids. He tries at the facility and just freaks everyone one. Also, since he’s unemployed who is footing the bill for the fancy facility he’s in? Surely, it can’t be his wife who works at a grocery store. In fact, isn’t they house a smidge too grand for them and their presumptive salaries? The main question here is…how much (logistics, quality, etc.) are we willing to overlook for an immensely likeable star? How far are we willing to suspend the disbelief? And also, why couldn’t McCarthy just find another solid dramatic vehicle like her previous one? Why do this crap at all? Anyway, there you have it. A movie so trite and dumbed down, only the people it’s dumbed down triteness panders too might be able to enjoy it. For shame, Melissa McCarthy, for shame.
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