And So It Goes Another Reiner Disappointment
Oren Little (Michael Douglas) has never gotten over the death of his wife from cancer. He’s become a shell of himself, the highly successful realtor looking to unload his $3.7-million estate so he can ride off into the sunset somewhere quiet and serene in order to live out his last days away from society’s constant glare.
To keep expenses down he’s been living in a small apartment complex that he owns, his unit next door to kindhearted chanteuse Leah (Diane Keaton), a woman who doesn’t particularly care for his constant sarcastic narcissism and apparent heartlessness. But she slowly begins to see a new side to Oren when the man’s only son Luke (Scott Shepherd) drops his nine-year-old daughter Sarah (Sterling Jerins) on the doorstep leaving her in his care. The girl quickly bonds to the singer while she tries to figure out whether or not her grandfather is someone she can trust, the trio slowly forming a bond that reawakens the hardened heart of the real estate tycoon and convinces Leah there’s more to the man than initially meets the eye.
And So It Goes is undeniably the best movie writer/director Rob Reiner has made in almost two decades, since the last time he teamed with star Michael Douglas on their political romance The American President. Sadly, this is not a compliment. In the years after that motion picture the filmmaker has unleashed a seeming never-ending flurry of cinematic dreck into the world, films as unforgivably awful as The Sum of Us, Alex & Emma, The Bucket List and Flipped delivered to drive viewers around the bend with the unmerciful mediocrity courtesy of him.
The movie is not, then, a return to form for the once great When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride filmmaker. And So It Goes is tolerable, nothing more (and thankfully nothing less), getting along as well as it does mainly because its two main stars are so agreeably pleasant even if the film they are part of can’t exactly say the same. Written by Mark Andrus (As Good As It Gets), the story is a trite, tired menagerie of melodramatic clichés, Reiner bringing little if anything of interest to the proceedings leaving little of consequence to talk about or discuss.
Still, Douglas and Keaton do still give their all, the pair having a pleasing chemistry hard to dislike. They banter and spar with another nicely, their mutual give and take having a suitable electricity that enlivens even the more mundane and mediocre portions of the scenario far above the level they’d ever have gotten to otherwise. Throw in an agreeably spunky Frances Sternhagen into the mix (she steals scenes left and right as the owner of the reality office Owen has worked at for decades) and I can’t say I never smiled or laughed, and at barely 90 minutes the film itself is hardly a chore to sit through until the end.
But it’s all just so unrelentingly dumb. Owen is an ass. Leah acts at times more like a flighty 20-year-old then she does a person even close to her actual age. A subplot involving Luke and his past misdeeds is as ham-fisted and it is nondescript, while certain melodramatic sequences reek of self-indulgence and contempt for the audience then they do anything else. One major even involving the unexpected birth of a child is especially laughable, and any goodwill I was starting to have for the characters and the film were erased the very second this particular character suddenly went into labor leaving Owen to save the day.
Reiner has made one of my absolute favorite films of all-time in When Harry Met Sally. He has made a handful of others, including This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and Misery, that I could watch at the drop of the hat and never grow tired of. But whatever touch he once had seems beyond gone at this point, and while And So It Goes is hardly the disaster his past few efforts might have been that hardly makes it a worthy addition to his filmography, either. If anything it’s just another sad reminder as to just how far the director has fallen, my hopes he’ll regain anything closer to his former glory now vanishing to the point I’m not entirely certain they even still exist.
Film Rating: 2 out of 4
