Growing Up and Other Lies (FILM REVIEW)
Growing Up and Other Lies
Film Review
by Kam Williams
Crude Quartet Roams around Manhattan
in Meanspirited Buddy Dramedy
Jake (Josh Lawson)
is finally fed up with New York
after years of trying to make it as an artist in the city. So, right before
he’s set to move back home to Ohio,
he summons his three BFFS, Rocks (Adam Brody), Gunderson
(Wyatt Cenac) and Billy (Danny Jacobs), to the northern tip of Manhattan for an impromptu gathering.
The plan is to spend the day
reminiscing about their misspent twenties while traversing the entire 260 block-length
of the island. The trip starts inauspiciously enough, with one of them vomiting
on a train platform at 7 in the morning.
Next, another makes an offensive
overture to an elderly woman sitting on a bench, asking whether she’d like to
sit on his finger. Later, Gunderson goes out of his way to hurt the feelings
(“I thought you’d be dead by now”) of a woman (Lucy Walters) he’d ostensibly seduced
and unceremoniously dumped after a one-night stand.
The crude quartet also offers dubious, unsolicited dating advice
to teenage girls attending an elite prep school, suggesting they avoid romance
at all costs, since it invariably leads to having one’s heart broken. We also
witness them dismantling a “Broadway” street sign, and giving a hard time (“How
much for everything?”) to a working-class clerk at a farmer’s market. And Rocks
(nicknamed for his huge gonads), whose fiancée (Lauren Miller) is nine-months
pregnant, risks missing the birth of his baby in order to participate in the interminable,
13-mile trek down memory lane.
Co-written
and co-directed by Danny Jacobs and Darren Grodsky, Growing
Up and Other Lies is a meanspirited, misogynistic dramedy masquerading as a
nostalgic male-bonding adventure. But this meeting of The He-Man Woman Haters
Club (ala TV’s Little Rascals) merely takes delight in insulting females at
every turn.
Its lame excuse for a plot presumes to thicken when Jake learns
that Tabatha (Amber Tamblyn), the ex he still loves, has just broken up with
her boyfriend and is suddenly on the market. Will he still pack up and leave,
or will he postpone his plans to return to the Midwest
in light of this development? Unfortunately, given how unlikable a protagonist we have here, you’re more inclined to root against than in favor of a romantic reunion.
Who wants to watch four, obnoxious, testosterone-fueled slackers vent
their vile on a gauntlet of unsuspecting victims?
Poor (½ star)
Unrated
Running time: 90 minutes
Distributor: E1
Entertainment
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