Quartet (2013) and Hope Springs (2012): B Movies with A-List Stars

As I noted in my review of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel last year, we now have a new genre of commercial motion pictures, which we might call BoomerCore  (or perhaps Boomersploitation) movies. BoomerCore pictures are targeted directly at the aging baby boom generation, and feature a somewhat elderly (60+) cast of A-list or former A-list actors laboring  in service of mediocre screenplays and/or slapdash plots. So far, the genre has focused primarily on cutely funny romantic melodramas, but who knows what the future will bring? I can imagine a lightly comic Zombie flick with Richard Dreyfus, Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton and Anjelica Huston? Or perhaps a droll Western, starring Jessica Lange, Sally Field, Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman?

Speaking of Hoffman, the two-time Oscar winner is the first-time director of Quartet, which was released early this year and has just come out on DVD. It must have been a joy for him to work with the magnificent British cast, which features Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins and Michael Gambon. These stalwarts do the best they can, but the plot is so underdeveloped and totally predictable, that even they can’t rescue it from ultimate mediocrity. It’s not terrible, mind you; the movie definitely has its moments and a certain charm.

The Marigold Hotel was advertised as a destination “for the elderly and beautiful”, somewhere in India. Quartet is set at a fictional place, somewhere in England, called Beecham House, a retirement home for the elderly and musical (apparently  modeled after a real home for retired musicians, Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, in Milan).  Beecham House has spacious, landscaped grounds, and an elegant, well maintained interior, made the more attractive  by being suffused with music. Music is everywhere, with retirees hooking up for impromptu instrumental trios, operatic songs, or jazz piano recitals. I’d like to live in a place like that; and I guess that’s part of the attraction of this movie to others of my generation: it’s a fantasy of the seemingly ideal retirement.

We get to know a number of the characters, most of which are delightfully quirky. Connolly plays a 

charming fellow named Wilf, whose respectability filter got broken following a stroke, so he’s now apt to say outrageous things, or to proposition pretty much any female he meets.  Collins is Cissy, a ditzy but sweet busybody, who is always trying to patch up conflicts. Gambon plays  Cedric, a stuffy impresario type. Courtenay’s character is Reg, a sincere, but brittle man who teaches highschoolers about the joys of opera. Reg, Wilf and Cissy were all opera stars back in the day, known for their many collaborations, especially a preeminent recording of Rigoletto made with the diva, Jean Horton – Reg’s ex-wife. When Jean (Maggie Smith) moves into Beecham House, Reg’s feathers are more than a little ruffled, and when there’s talk of reuniting “The Quartet” for a charity event, there’s a bit of middle-school style drama.

 

Although the actors are fun to watch, they don’t get to do much.  Not even actually sing. 

Quartet is available on DVD or BlueRay via Netflix, or streaming with  Amazon Instant Video or Xfinity OnDemand.

Another recent Boomercore flick is Hope Springs, which stars Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell.  Should be good, right? Well, the casting department certainly deserves an A, but writer Vanessa Taylor gets a D in my book, for flubbing a potentially good premise, and director David Frankel earns a C- for the crime of wasting talented actors on a mediocre production. Taylor has worked exclusively on TV series previously (Game of Thrones, Alias) and has yet to learn how to edit out bloat or, for that matter, how to sustain a feature length comedy.  Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) should have known better.

Hope Springs is about an empty nester couple whose relationship has lost its vigor. Arnold (Jones) seems willing to accept the rut into which his marriage (and his life) has fallen; but Kay (Streep) sees the emptiness as a slow death and decides to fight back. She enrolls the two of them in a week-long marriage counseling program/vacation in a quaint little Maine-coast village. Arnold and Kay are anachronistically old fashioned – think Archie and Edith Bunker transported to 2012 – but their therapist, Dr. Feld (Carell), is modern. The problem, he explains, is that poor Kay and Arnold have drifted out of intimacy, by which he means sexual intercourse. They just need to rediscover the joy of sex, and bingo! – all will be well.  I’m oversimplifying, but not by much. Finding common interests, trying to have a conversation, such things are apparently too complex for movie audiences – or certain Hollywood screenwriters – to grasp.

Dr. Feld prescribes a series of ‘exercises’ designed reintroduce the unhappy couple to physical intimacy. Some of this stuff is indeed funny to watch. A few moments are laugh-out-loud funny. But it’s a one-note script. Fumbling, awkward sex can be funny, even with – or maybe especially with – older protagonists, but not for 100 minutes. If we’re aiming below the belt, some alcohol or drug induced shenanigans are de rigueur, or perhaps some pee-pee/caca jokes; or, if a bit of sophistication is the aim, some repartee would be nice, or perhaps a little misbegotten flirtation and slapstick jealousy. Sadly, there’s none of that here.

So Streep does her impression of Edith Bunker contemplating oral sex, and Jones channels Archie playacting at empathy. None of this is remotely realistic, and only a fraction is comedic. Carell is very

sincere and believable as the therapist, however.

Oh, the moral of the story, you ask? [spoiler alert] Sex is, in fact, a panacea.  Even for ‘old people’, a good roll in the hay works wonders, restores vigor, cures E.D., allows conversation to flow and brings general happiness.  The sun shines, the kids and grandkids visit again, Arnold’s passion for life returns, Kay smiles, the music wells up.  All is well.

Hope Springs is available on DVD via Netflix or streaming with  Amazon Instant Video or Xfinity OnDemand.