Movie Review: "And So It Goes" (2014)

Movie: "And So It Goes"
Director: Rob Reiner
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Image Source

A rather wealthy but rude, offensive, and all around unhappy real estate agent named Oren Little (Michael Douglas) is trying to sell his home as he is set to retire. One day, his son Luke (Scott Shepherd), a former drug addict, shows up on his doorstep and tells Oren he has to go to jail and needs someone to watch his 10 year old daughter Sarah (Sterling Jerins). Oren has never even met his granddaughter and still says no, but since he has no where else to leave her, his son drops her off anyway. Oren initially pawns his granddaughter off on his neighbor, Leah (Diane Keaton), who is more than willing to watch Sarah despite Oren being unpleasant to her more often than not. Sarah has thrown a wrench in Oren's plans, but as he grows closer to her and Leah, he discovers they may be just what he needs to pull himself out of his misery. 

This movie is about what we expected. No, it's less than what we expected. It is "blah" because the performances, writing and directing are "blah." In fact, "blah" is putting it nicely, because this movie is pretty freaking awful. Douglas and Keaton, who have been in some fantastic films in their decades-long careers, phone in their performances extremely poorly. It's not that we don't buy Michael Douglas as a crotchety old miser, it's that his performance is severely lacking of any effort whatsoever. In fact, it's as if they both thought this movie would be a huge success and showed up for the paycheck, only to be disappointed in the long run.

Beyond the poor performance of the character, Oren Little himself was just a complete jerk! Are all people like this when they get older? Because if they are, we may as well just end it now. We get it, we have all suffered loss, no matter how big or how small. Losing something or someone you love doesn't mean that you: A) have to be an asshole, or B) have the right to be an asshole. To be fair, his neighbor's kids needed to get smacked in the mouth. They were not cute AT ALL and they managed to make Oren seem like less of a jackass and it sort of made his anger seem a little more reasonable...sometimes. On top of all this, Oren, along with many other characters throughout the movie, are extremely racist. It is excused and almost seems expected to be humorous because the characters are all older, but it just comes off as rude, offensive, out-of-touch, and gratuitous. But who knows, maybe grandparents and people who are nearing retirement might find all of this "get off my lawn/every Mexican is a gardener" shtick charming and realistic, but we certainly did not and highly doubt very many people did, either. It's just another cinematic instance where getting old automatically means being miserable. Life is what you make it, and if you make it miserable, it will be miserable. It's as simple as that.

This is yet another stale comedy featuring a retirement age pair of adults who treat each other like crap and yet somehow manage to fall in love. IT'S JUST LIKE REAL LIFE, Y'ALL!!!! We hate to say it, but Reiner, your time is up, man. Your days of "The Princess Bride" and "Spinal Tap" are long, long, over. You have managed to take two of the better old-school actors that are still around and place them in an antiquated, stagnant film filled with poorly timed jokes and overt and unnecessary racism with a penchant for bickering, crackheads, lounge singing, and Viagra. But it's not all your fault: the film as a whole seems uber-phony, formulaic, and ineptly performed. And why you made the directorial decision to give yourself literally the world's worst toupee, we will never understand because it's just not funny.

My Rating: 3.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 3.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 16%
Do we recommend this movie: No.
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "The Way, Way Back"