Richard (Rick) Linklater’s latest movie, Where’d You
Go Bernadette? [hereafter: “Bernadette”], is billed as a comedy
with a message. Granted it’s a dumb message (“Find your passion”), but dumb is
sort-of okay in a comedy, right? Except that the movie is not a straight-up
comedy, except in the Greek or Elizabethan sense, in that it is not a tragedy and
the protagonists don’t die at the end. This
is not to say there are no funny bits.
There actually are quite a few. Rather,
Bernadette’s humor is largely satirical, laid on a story that’s sentimental and
melodramatic.
The satire is mostly of the easy sort: most people, it
observes, particularly upper middle-class social climbers, are not very deep and
are far less interesting than they believe they are. As a group, they are easy
to mock. Although the targets are
obvious, Bernadette is quite good at hitting them, and the movie is
often quite witty if a bit trite. Thematically,
it’s also rather clichéd, telling us that creative people must create. You
know, follow your muse and all that.
But if the comedy (or satire) is not particularly great, and
the moral of the story is pretty obvious, why am I recommending (which I am) that
you go see this film? Two words: Cate Blanchette. This is easily her best, most bravura
performance since Blue Jasmine in 2013, a role which earned her an Oscar
as Best Actress at the 2014 Academy Awards. (And no, I’m not forgetting 2015’s
overrated Carol, for which she was again nominated.) Blanchette
really shines and fully carries this new movie, making what could have been an abrasively
nasty or depressingly sad or over-the-top ridiculous character seem real and
sympathetic. And yes, funny.
Blanchette plays the title character, Bernadette Fox, a
woman roughly Blanchette’s own age (50) who twenty years ago, just after
receiving the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship award (commonly known as the “Genius
Grant”), fled her promising career as an architect in LA, and as far as her
professional colleagues knew, disappeared without a trace – this following a catastrophe related to her
crowning achievement – something referred to as the Twenty Mile House.
As we join the story, Bernadette is living in a large ramshackle
“manse” ” – with multiple roof leaks, rotting floorboards,
etc. - in the fashionable Queen Anne district of Seattle, with her husband
Elgie (Billy Cradup) and beloved fifteen year old daughter, Bee (newcomer Emma
Nelson). She is highly intelligent, caustically disdainful of people in general
and the overzealous parents at Bee’s school in particular (referring to them as
“gnats”, buzzing around you in droves with no purpose or effect other than
being annoying) , so agoraphobic that she has turned to a “virtual personal
assistant” to take care of pretty much any and every thing in life requiring
interpersonal connection – like purchases, bill paying, travel arrangements, making
appointments, and so forth. She has avoided any connection with her former
career or any other occupation. At the same time, she is totally, and it seems
quite successfully devoted to her daughter. Bernadette is a mess, sure, but in
Blanchette’s hands she is fully, multi-dimensionally alive and fascinating.
Elgie seems to be a model husband and father and, notably, is
a star exec at Microsoft, leading a team developing a big deal A.I. project known
as Samantha 2. Bee is a brilliant eighth grader at Galer Street School, which
while not yet quite in the league of Lakeside School or the Bush School is,
like its parent population, a striver. Bee is quite precocious and surprisingly
mature. She’s even the narrator of the story (when occasional narration is helpful).
She adores her mom as much as Bernadette adores her.
Way back when, Mom and Dad promised Bee her heart’s desire,
which at that moment was a pony, if she attained perfect grades at Galer. Now
in eighth grade, Bee has done it, but she’s older now and has a different wish:
a trip to Antarctica. This sets in motion a series of events and crises - marital
tension, feuds with neighbors, mudslides, international identity thieves, a
blackberry abatement specialist, psychiatric malpractice, wisdom teeth, penguins,
a mysterious disappearance - all of which bring the family to a life-changing apotheosis.
I’ll not spoil it by going into more detail, but Bernadette moves along ever
more briskly and increasingly becomes emotionally engaging, which is to say melodramatic
(in a good way) along the way. 
The problem is that there’s a regrettable absence of textual
reality and attention to detail in many places, which erodes the film’s credibility. The story doesn’t really hang together, if you think about it at all. Aside from Bernadette herself and
to a lesser extent Elgie and Bee, the characters are not well drawn; they’re merely
caricatures for the most part. But then, Blue
Jasmine had similar problems, and Blanchette still gave an
award-winning performance. Despite these issues, I should add that Kristen Wiig
and Judy Greer each make the most of their roles too, Wiig playing Bernadette’s
gnatty neighbor and fellow Galen Street parent, and Greer as a well-meaning
psychologist. Laurence Fishbourne has a nice turn as well, oozing wisdom and
advice as Bernadette’s former mentor and colleague.
Coming from Linklater, one of my favorite directors, who
co-wrote the screenplay, adapted from the best-selling novel by Maria Semple, the writing disappointed me. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy Where’d You Go
Bernadette? I liked it. But with
a little more care, it might have been great. I suppose the same can be said
for the novel: it’s engaging, funny, highly readable, a best seller, but by no means
a great work. In my opinion, the movie overall is a second tier Linklater
effort, along with School of Rock (2003), Bad News Bears (2005) and
Everybody Wants Some (2016). On the other hand, School of Rock is
probably Linklater’s most commercially successful movie, and Bernadette
appears to be off to a good start, too.
If you’re looking for an entertaining, appealing summer movie
that may make you laugh (and may make you cry a bit too), Where’d You Go
Bernadette? may be your ticket. And as I said earlier, Cate Blanchette’s
magnetic performance is so good, it is reason enough to see this film.
2 hours 10 minutes Rated
PG-13
Grade: Movie B+ / Cate Blanchette A
In wide release
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