Demolition review

[Westside Steve]

Demolition

Fox Searchlight

Well guys, among the current crop of movies opening this week the pickings are Slimmer than usual. I'd planned on the egg Williams biography picture I Saw the Light but it's no longer in theaters.

I don't think I could have stomach another 2 hours of poop jokes with Melissa McCarthy and that video game looking flick, well you know.

So, knowing that Jake Gyllenhaal pictures at least wind up in the acceptable column more often than not we're going with his latest, demolition.

From the trailers we know this will be one of those redemption flicks, you know what I mean, the main character's life is falling down around his ankles but somehow he finds love and happiness with an unlikely new partner, new job, new city whatever.

And frankly, no, this type of film isn't usually earthshaking or avant-garde but Gyllenhaal and Fox Searchlight have a reputation for being just slightly left-of-centre and it's that offbeat approach that separates this genre from your typical family chick flick. And it is really off beat friends and Neighbors. As a matter of fact it's so offbeat, like a bad drummer in a Jazz Ensemble, it's hard to watch.

Davis Mitchell (Gyllenhaal) seems to have a fairly successful path in this world. He's married to the boss's daughter makes a lot of money and live in a nice house. But there is something wrong, very wrong. You never exactly get the idea what that is until she's killed in a car crash that he survives. That's early in the film and at that point we watch his life, and particularly his mind, start to unravel. In the hospital waiting room while she's losing her battle with the injuries he is the victim of one of those vending machines that takes your money and a little screw turns but the bag of M&M's stays Inn the machine.

It's happened to all of us but in Davis' case it drives him to distraction. He goes home and writes a letter to the vending machine company, not just a letter but the entire ordeal of his wife's death and his feelings about it.

Soon his cathartic correspondence prompts Karen (Naomi Watts) the woman in charge of customer service at the vending company to call him in the middle of the night. Unfortunately she is crazier than he is, has a severe weed habit, is in a relationship with the asshole that owns the vending company and has a really disturbed teenage boy. After a few miscues, the two manage to meet up and

during this uncomfortable courtship Davis mental state really starts to unravel. He's taken to disassembling everything around him with a set of tools and reduces machines, computers, furniture actually every manner of device to pieces at home and at the office.

I wasn't able to patch together any kind of reason for his crazy behavior and I'm guessing the writer had no idea. For all intents and purposes this is one of those situations that just screams weirdness for weirdness sake. While I have no doubt there are plenty of dummies, like myself, who often miss the point of something deep and involved there are just as many who mistake horseshit for brilliance.

Even if these situations more believable it would still be hard to work up any kind of empathy for the characters mainly because none of them are even slightly charismatic.

If you don't like anybody you don't care why they are doing what they do and their quirky behavior never gets beyond irritating.

Ironically as I write this piece the kid is being interviewed by David Moss on the channel 8 news and prattling away about the exhilaration and the Zen-like freedom of tearing apart the house in the film.

He's just a kid so I don't particularly blame him for being so impressed by such a bunch of nonsense but I think I lost count at fifteen "you knows" in his speech.

Like the old joke says I don't know much about art but I know what I like. And I didn't like this.

D+

WSS