Kevin Bacon & Kyra Sedgwick’s So-So Dramedy

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick carry their vivid display screen presence and knowledgeable timing to The Greatest You Can, elevating this low-key, Tribeca-premiering dramedy. With robust performances and a contemporary premise about an surprising friendship in center age, however far too many creaky comedian tropes, the uneven movie is all the time watchable however by no means pops off the display screen in a gripping manner.

It’s the second function written and directed by Michael J. Weithorn, a co-creator of The King of Queens and a veteran author on different sitcoms. It’s merely descriptive and never a disparagement to say that with its usually strained plot and quick-hit sitcom timing, the movie is almost definitely to enchantment to an undemanding viewers and an older demographic.

Sedgwick performs Cynthia, whose good husband, Warren (Judd Hirsch, reliably on level), as soon as on the employees of the Watergate committee, is now 83 and sliding into dementia. At the beginning she seems overly chatty and hyper, a personality attempting too laborious for comedian impact — particularly when she first meets Stan, a safety guard.

Bacon slides simply into the function of Stan, however his character can be launched as a comic book cliché. In essentially the most blatant of the sitcom-style tropes, Stan has a prostate drawback and whereas patrolling neighborhoods at evening makes use of shrubbery as a makeshift urinal. When the alarm in Cynthia’s home goes off and calls him to the scene, he urgently asks to make use of her rest room — and what a coincidence, she is the proper individual to deal with his drawback, as she broadcasts with fluttery, over-the-top enthusiasm.  

The pressured comedy calms down a bit when in addition they start a friendship, usually by means of textual content messages, which the actors ship in voiceover. Cynthia tells Stan about grappling along with her husband’s state of affairs, and he confides in her about his fraught relationship along with his daughter, Sammi (Brittany O’Grady), a struggling singer-songwriter who lacks confidence. The textual content approach works extra gracefully than in most movies, however once more lame stabs at humor intrude. As they get to know one another, Cynthia asks if Stan is in contact along with his ex-wife, and he texts again, “Solely by voodoo doll.” Yikes.

Because the friendship between Stan and Cynthia develops, it has some touching moments. Sedgwick lets us see how a lot Cynthia nonetheless loves and is dedicated to her husband, and in addition how lonely his situation has made her. And Bacon is so vibrant because the clever, sharp-witted Stan that he makes you want Weithorn’s screenplay had finished extra to fill within the character’s backstory. How did this man turn into such an underachiever and such a clumsy father?

Correctly, the movie acknowledges however doesn’t overplay the inevitable romantic overtones the friendship takes on. And Bacon and Sedgwick by no means let their standing as a widely known married couple in actual life intrude on their character’s delicate, tentative relationship. Every will get an extended, emotional monologue close to the tip that they ship with easy naturalism. It’s simple to think about how rather more pedestrian the movie would have been with lesser actors in these roles.

Weithorn will get robust performances from the supporting forged, notably O’Grady, whose transient musical scenes as Sammi are stable additions to the movie. The daddy-daughter relationship would be the movie’s most plausible, as we see that Stan means properly and tries to encourage her however says all of the flawed issues.

Olivia Luccardi performs Stan’s youthful sometime-hookup, whose sexting with him is performed for some efficient laughs. Ray Romano seems in a quick cameo in a video name as a health care provider good friend of Cynthia’s who advises her on Warren’s situation. And Meera Rohit Kumbhani, as Warren’s caregiver, has one of many movie’s stronger extra surprising twists when it seems she has recorded the recollections he’s nonetheless in a position to recapture.

If solely the movie had risen to that stage of shock and emotional poignancy extra usually, with extra of the wistfulness that involves infuse Cynthia and Stan’s friendship and with humor that was much less eye-rolling.