It’s depressing to contemplate the chasm between Noah Baumbach’s The Squid And The Whale and this dreadful follow-up. As unfocused and dreary as Squid was lively and quick-witted, it’s enough to make you wonder if the earlier film was some sort of marvellous fluke.
In characteristically deadened fashion Nicole Kidman essays the Margot of the title, a monstrous bully who wields her celebrity-writer status and twitty psychobabble against family and lovers alike. A preening, self-serving arch-manipulator, she arrives on the eve of her estranged sister’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding to short-tempered slacker Jack Black and proceeds to wreak havoc. Margot’s recently dumped husband (Turturro), her scheming lover (Hinds, the best thing in the picture) and a son who is alternately spurned and smothered duck for cover to no avail.
It ought to be the set up for a terrific screwball comedy or at least a lively drama, but anaemic, muddled plotting soon puts pay to that. As this ill-defined dirge wears on it becomes clear that none of the characters are any more sympathetic than she is. They all speak referencing the same bargain basement pop-psychology. Most lines of dialogue, and by extension the characters, are entirely interchangeable.
There are rare moments when Mr. Baumbach displays the flair for sparky one-liners that made Squid And Whale such a critical ‘wow’ but it’s not enough to stop us from cheering when the final credits bring a blessed release.