“St. Vincent” ★★★★
A Review by Kevin Powers
Sometimes you expect a little and get a lot. Rarely do I see a movie that fills me so fully with hope and joy and love. The debut feature from writer/director Theodore Melfi did that to me last Sunday afternoon. The movie is an all-out crowd pleaser starring the great Bill Murray in one of his best roles. “St. Vincent” is its name. Unexpectedly, it is my current favorite movie of the year.
A Review by Kevin Powers
Sometimes you expect a little and get a lot. Rarely do I see a movie that fills me so fully with hope and joy and love. The debut feature from writer/director Theodore Melfi did that to me last Sunday afternoon. The movie is an all-out crowd pleaser starring the great Bill Murray in one of his best roles. “St. Vincent” is its name. Unexpectedly, it is my current favorite movie of the year.
Movies
like “St. Vincent” set out to please the audience. The plot is obvious. You can
see the end coming a mile away, but it’s a journey that is so well-made, so
much fun, so touching, often heartbreaking, that we can’t fault it for that. It
wants us to love it, so we do.
To
know the title character, Vincent, or Vin (as they call him), is to…well, nobody
really knows Vin. He lives alone in a broken down house in Brooklyn. He drinks
way too much. He smokes. He gambles away whatever he gets.
The opening sequence of the film
sets this up. We see his life, his routine. Get up, drink, smoke, drink more, feed
his cat (which is all he has in the way of food), enjoy a visit from Daka, a
great Naomi Watts as a pregnant Russian “lady of the night” complete with thick
accent, pass out (violently), repeat. That’s about it.
Enter
Maggie (Melissa McCarthy), his new next-door neighbor, and her son, Oliver (newcomer
Jaeden Lieberher). Maggie is going
through a divorce and forced to work full-time (even over-time) to support the
growing preteen. The father is suing for custody, so there’s that as well.
Oliver
is small for his age, and, at his new private Catholic school, there, of
course, is room for bullying. The normal name-calling and gym class taunts. His
teacher (Chris O’Dowd) is that classic sarcastic, seen-it-all-before guy. He
teaches them mostly about the saints.