By Kamaria Porter "A Beginners Guide to Endings" is a convoluted but fanciful romp with a dysfunctional family dealing with the repercussions of a sad sack father's actions after he commits suicide by way of Niagara Falls. Left behind are five sons by three different mothers. The story centers around the three eldest (Scott Caan, Paolo Costanzo, and Jason Jones) who discover in their father's will that they will all die prematurely of heart failure. Dear old dad Duke, played by Harvey Keitel, loved to gamble and bet on his boys' health in signing them up for a drug trial. Greedy and weak Duke took the payday and ended his life before his sons learned of their medical fate from his priest brother played by the always reliable JK Simmons. The boys all engage in their own version of carpe diem and comedy flows from the quirky hi-jinks that result. The funniest is Costanzo's Jacob who has played by the rules and decides to make an extreme bucket list of risky and over-the-top behavior. With his youngest brother in tow, Jacob buys a muscle car, wears an Elvis suit, finally talks to the cute girl he sees everyday, and plans to ride in a capsule down Niagara Falls. He's a bit odd to begin with and it's quite funny seeing him try to break out of his shell and meet the confines of his nerdy imagination. JK Simmons is the comedic heavyweight landing caustic one-liners on the idiocy of his nephews.
"A Beginners Guide to Endings" offers a lot to chuckle at, but could have strengthened the relationship between the brothers. Instead of having to deal with new morality as a family and finding comedy in greater urgency and honesty, the boys disperse to find individual wacky adventures. The scenes with all three brothers are unfortunately the weakest with the actors fudging lines or breaking dialogue for physical comedy. I expected a bit more from Caan, who with Casey Affleck was always able to make hilarity out of their bickering sibling interludes in the "Oceans" series. With more attention on the family unit and the comedy of these guys who've avoided being a family finally having to deal with each other, the film could have been much funnier. | | By Alex Wilgus Attempting to pull madcap comedy and emotional exposition out of a botched suicide attempt and the slow march toward a successful one is enough to arrest anybody’s attention. A shocking setup like this one begs to be followed up on with a well-written, compelling tale of irony and comic tomfoolery. Unfortunately, "A Beginner’s Guide to Endings" offers little follow through on big ideas, and a veteran cast of actors does even more to distract from the film’s lack of substance.
The brotherly dynamics, slow-motion rock music montages and a perplexing emphasis on gambling culture makes for an uninteresting stylistic cross between "Bottle Rocket" and "Snatch." The pairing of Scott Caan and Casey Affleck as brothers also brings "Ocean’s Eleven" painfully into the foreground.
J.K. Simmons, my favorite character actor, is put in his most thankless role yet, one which assumes his presence alone will make an interesting character out of the furthest thing from: a priest, who is also for some reason the arbiter of the will and the family’s advisor.
I will concede that comedy is largely a guessing game. It’s a subjective genre, and what’s funny to one person may cause a bad case of the straight-face in another. Unfortunately, the entirety of my reactions were of the latter type. While I literally enjoyed nothing about this film, I will allow for the possibility that I am a stony, heartless and jaded young man who cannot feel mirth.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I did enjoy Tricia Helfer playing a homicidal ex-girlfriend. In my opinion, her performance was the only successful curiosity in a series of uninspired attempts at quirky characters.
"A Beginner’s Guide to Endings" proves that adding strong acting personalities to stylish direction is not the magic recipe for those ‘classic’ character moments we’ve enjoyed in Guy Ritchie and Wes Anderson movies. Clever writing and interesting story structure are essential in making comedy work. Though comedy is a more relative endeavor than most, I can’t help but think that if the script had been given as much attention as the cinematography, the film’s charismatic performances would have been a lot more entertaining. |
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