And So It Goes (2014)

CRUMBLIES… 

Wow. Old Jack was hip deep in snot and self-pity when he was trapped in a pile of hot water bottles and blankets and made to watch this dull reworking of last week’s disappointment (As Good as it Gets): And So It Goes (2014).

Ugh.

Turns out this film shares one of the writers of the Jack Nicholson pantomime (Mark Andrus): this time making the protagonist deeply unpleasant through encrusted grief rather than mental illness. But, dear God, it rehashes the older film as though the first hashing was particularly watchable. And it does it with a drabness that makes the ‘flued up older gentleman properly scared he’s in the final hours of a palliative care regime.

This time, the hero is a mean old estate agent played by Michael Douglas. His wife’s long dead, much like his humanity, and he is trying to flog his big house whilst staying at his little holiday/granny flat complex and bullying the tenants. He lives next door to Diane Keaton who is dealing with her own widowhood by sobbing through songs as a lounge singer and making post-stroke Grandma Walton look like a malicious bitch.

Christ…

The plot heaves into operation with the same subtlety as Trump’s tricking of American morons: Grumpy-Shit’s unexpected and unknown grand-daughter (Sterling Jerins) is dumped on him by his recalcitrant son; the son departs for prison; the grand-daughter hides in Sappy Neighbour’s house and discovers familial love; grand-daughter starts to make old Michael Douglas’s heart beat again…

Then Lady Sappy begins to make other parts of him beat again.

Gah!

Really.

Christ alive.

Half-way through and you’ll be begging for death. I know I was. Nurse Kelly called in the home’s psychiatrist to get me through the final hour of tedious plot mechanics and heart-warming gunk.

This film is…

Oh, just ghastly. Give it a go if you’ve had an incident and only have memories of the 1940s and upper limb twitches left to you. Elsewise, use that brain for something else. Like living in hope, perhaps.