Weinstein

PG 13 103 min

Well gang I love Bill Murray, you love Bill Murray; everybody love Bill Murray.

Known mostly for his comic stick use moved into semi dramatic roles fairly will. It seems big stars (see Robert DeNiro Jack Nicholson Walter Matthau, etc) as they age are required to play at least one cranky old man in a redemption movie. In ST VINCENT Murray is Vincent McKenna a cantankerous old drunk with a bad attitude and a gambling problem but as you will find out a heart of, well something similar to gold.

In general he hates everybody and everybody hates him including his two new neighbors Maggie, a single mother battling a custody case and her nerdish son Oliver (Melissa McCarthy and Jaeden Lieberher).

Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances Maggie is forced to accept the situation in which Oliver spends a few hours a day after school with Vincent.

It's not long before the reluctant Manny god's little fellow through a series of inappropriate experiences introducing him to beer joints race tracks bookies and hookers. Along the way the little fellow becomes a little worldlier and a lot more self-assured.

Soon a couple of redeeming facets of the essence life are revealed. All over words of his heroic service and his devotion to his wife confined to a nursing home he can ill afford.

That's enough of a spoiler and I hope you haven't read this far if you decide to see the film.

I really wanted to love this film and I fear I'm about to damn it with faint praise. None of the situations, the gambling, the wife, the stroke, any of them seemed serious enough for their obvious intent. They, like the ending, seemed to have been written on the spot and dropped into place with little forethought. the comedy isn't all that funny and the drama not really dire. That's not to say they don't work, just that I think a little more attention to the storyline might have made this great. Between the cast and the promise SAINT VINCENT was already on the inside track and should have had a bigger finish. Still I'm a sucker for this kind of film, aren't we all?

B-

WSS