This Is Where I Leave You is a comedy/drama film which comes directed by Shawn Levy who some may know as the director of The Internship (2013) or Real Steal (2011). This Is Where I Leave You stars Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll and Kathryn Hahn. It follows the story of Judd Altman who is played by Jason Bateman. Judd Altman discovers that his wife is cheating on him with his boss and then shortly after finds out that his father has died and he must travel home.
This Is Where I leave You Trailer
This Is Where I leave You Review
The plot of This Is Where I Leave You is a little bit weird because when thinking about it, it starts off with the story of Judd (Jason Bateman) finding out his wife is cheating on him, but then without resolving this we get a new story put on top of that of his father dying and him needing to go back home, which is really what the film is about. This Is Where I Leave you is set up as some type of family drama/comedy where we get to see different family members interact with each other. Each member has their own problems and struggles mixed in with some unhappiness with their lives which makes them kind of depressing to watch. It’s also a type of story that has been done many times before in many different films.
Jason Bateman is strange to watch on screen I think because he always has this kind of look like “feel sorry for me” type of thing and he just wanders around like that for the whole film. I get he is upset about his wife, but mixed in with the father storyline and it gets kind of a bit much to watch.
This Is Where I leave You is full of awkward family moments and the occasional jokes between characters. It has its funny moments here and there but it keeps leaning towards wanting to be more of a drama film with some emotional scenes towards the end. I feel like it could have been much better if it chose just to either go with one or the other, it didn’t need to really try and be both. This film actually has a similar storyline to The Judge with the main character going back home for their family and as a drama The Judge is much better.
A lot of the funny scenes in the film come from Adam Driver’s character of Phillip Altman who kind of saves the movie in some parts from being too dull at times. I enjoyed Adam Driver’s performance in the film and his interactions with Jason Bateman and the rest of the cast were usually amusing. Jane Fonda has more of the awkward types of scenes. Jane Fonda’s character of Hillary Altman has most of her scenes being all about her breast size, it’s kind of funny but I think the same joke is made all the time with it. Tina Fey is good in the film though and is always funny to watch, would have been better if she was in the film more though.
Overall for the acting it was all fairly standard, many of the cast are TV stars who are easily recognisable to most people. There wasn’t so many dramatic moments in the film until towards the end with Jason Batemen getting one good emotional scene. But as for comedy acting people like Tina Fey and Adam Driver know what they’re doing when it comes to that type of performance so you get something fairly good from them.
As for the directing from Shawn Levy I thought it was okay. There isn’t any scenes in the movie that are really impressive but the tone of the film was fairly well set. Where I sort think the film gets boring though is in the pacing. I don’t know why but I found myself tuning out sometimes and going into my own thoughts during this movie and then looking back on screen and being like, oh… they are still doing the same thing. It’s a bit slow this movie and issues that characters have take forever to resolve. It’s like the screenplay had maybe too much content and characters to fit into the film and way to many ideas, we see all of them and then are like, well it’s a lot of different plots to deal with.
Characters don’t always make sense in the film either and seem to be a little bit inconsistent. There are some drug taking scenes, some fight scenes, some romance scenes and awkward scenes that all the characters participate in and I sort of wonder if they were put in there just have more jokes or if they were really necessary at all. In particular the drug taking scenes, yeah it’s funny but really, did This Is Where I leave You need it in there?
Overall This Is Where I Leave You is an okay film but it does drag along with its plot for a long time and only has a few jokes here and there to laugh at. It’s got some great TV comedy actors in there such as Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Adam Driver who provide a lot of entertainment but the story and script is a bit of a mess. I didn’t mind the film so much but there’s just not really many good things to say about it that’s all.
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