Movie Review: 'Mistress America'
By Bill Wine
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- "New York is like being at a party where you don't know anyone – all the time," complains Tracy, the protagonist of Mistress America, to her mother.
It's move-in day at Barnard as nervous freshman Tracy embarks on her academic journey, hoping that she can get into the university's literary society.
Knowing only one person in New York City who isn't somehow connected with Barnard, she calls Brooke, her soon-to-be-stepsister, who is a decade older and is the daughter of her mom's fiance.
Lola Kirke (from Gone Girl) as Tracy and Greta Gerwig as Brooke headline writer-director Noah Baumbach's college campus comedy, Mistress America, as odd-couple adventurers, mentor and mentee.
In her chaotic New York life, force-of-nature Brooke, a poster girl for self-absorption and delusion, acts quirkily optimistic, but that's not really who she is.
The movie certainly acknowledges that virtually everybody is actually performing in some way, but Brooke is especially and transparently phony.
The problem is that so is the film, too arch and inauthentic by half, as Tracy's erudition and artistic ambitiousness contrasts with Brooke's energetic ditziness.
Then, when Tracy begins borrowing elements of Brooke's out-there personality and crowded life to use in her writing, their friendship is sorely tested.
Writer-director Baumbach (While We're Young, Greenberg, The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) and Gerwig collaborated on the screenplay for Mistress America, just as they did on Frances Ha. But their rat-a-tat dialogue, as it spins its wheels and connects the dots, never quite delivers the quotables.
Baumbach employs breathless, if not manic, pacing throughout the film's under-an-hour-and-a-half running time, but when speed is the main if not the only thing a screwball comedy offers up, it's in trouble.
Which is the case with the severely overwritten Mistress America. Yes, the characters talk fast, but the ensemble spew out more dialogue than they or the film can handle and seem to aim it at us rather than at each other.
The film is just too crowded with smart, articulate, but narcissistic characters whose self-conscious dialogue merely results in them wearing out their welcome. Especially when amusing/peculiar snuffs out amusing/haha to this extent.
Farce can be forced but not if it isn't funny.
Still, the key to your response is the performance of Gerwig. If you're charmed and touched by her, then the film will hold up. If, on the other hand, her work strikes you as forced and overplayed and therefore insufferable – as it did in this corner of the globe -- then so will the film.
So we'll spew out 2 stars out of 4 for Mistress America, a semi-autobiographical screwball farce about female friendship, creative ownership, and betrayal that is well south of engaging and sometimes close to enraging.
