A
film review by Lorraine Ali for latimes.com on Nov. 15, 2018.
Aging,
and in youth-obsessed Los Angeles no less, is the subject and setting of Chuck Lorre’s new Netflix series, The Kominsky Method.
The
cruel realities of growing old and the absurdities of Hollywood have always
been low-hanging fruit in TV and film, but this dark, funny and moving
half-hour comedy (streaming Friday) is so much more than the sum of its
enlarged prostate and struggling-actor jokes.
Sandy
Kominsky (Michael Douglas) is a thrice-divorced
acting coach whose successful on-screen career is mostly behind him. Norman
Newlander (Alan Arkin) is his
cranky, old-school agent and friend who’s just been widowed after nearly five
decades of marriage to the love of his life, Eileen (Susan Sullivan). Armed with plenty of sardonic wit, the two men
navigate loss, messy family dynamics and their own ambition in a world that
just assumes they’ll quietly retreat into their golden years (spoiler alert:
they don’t).
The
formidable star power and talent of Douglas and Arkin elevate this
single-camera comedy right out of the gate. As Sandy and Norm, they bring
substance, depth and an understated sense of humor to a format that often
relies on rote plots, one-liners and exaggerated characters.
That’s
not to say that The Kominsky Method
doesn’t tackle plenty of familiar themes; it does. There’s the standard fare of
creaky-bone references, getting up to use the bathroom several times a night
and the perils of dating after 50 — or 70, but it’s embedded inside a bigger
picture that’s personal and unique to these two men.
In
other words, this isn’t the story of two seniors struggling to keep up with a
changing world. Sure they make fun of stupid,
made-up names like Skype and lament
the cluelessness of the acting studio’s millennial students. But Norm’s
emotional journey after his wife’s death and Sandy’s newfound sense of loyalty
to anyone other than himself offer unexpected revelations — big and small.
The
16-episode streaming series (eight episodes per year) is a departure for Lorre,
who’s known for churning out hit show after hit show: Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Mom, and Young Sheldon. It’s darker, there’s no
laugh track and it takes place all over Los Angeles – Musso & Frank,
Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the Valley. It does however offer a few
over-the-top characters such as Norman’s mess-of-a-daughter Phoebe (Lisa Edelstein) and Danny DeVito as Sandy’s urologist.
There are also plenty of gags tucked into the smart writing and stellar
performances that would be perfectly at home on network TV.
Lorre
knows this, and wastes no time poking fun at that world when Sandy lectures his
class on the seriousness of the craft; how it’s not about doing the kind of
fluffy stuff that wins a People’s Choice Award (Big Bang Theory has won many).
Lorre
takes another step into the self-deprecation zone when Sandy admits to Norm
that he wants to land a sitcom like The
Big Bang Theory because those actors make a million bucks a week. Sandy is disgusted. It’s crap! he says. You’re a
world-famous acting coach. What’s it going to look like, you doing a network
sitcom? Oh, the wonderful irony of Douglas and Arkin delivering those
lines!
The Kominsky Method also features Nancy Travis as Lisa, Sandy’s student
and rare age-appropriate love
interest and Sarah Baker as his
daughter, Mindy. Both women challenge him to reassess what he wants from the
rest of his life, and while it’s his habit to avoid any sort of
self-reflection, he’s forced to comply when he’s diagnosed with prostate
cancer. Not exactly the fun stuff that made Dharma
& Greg a thing.
The Kominsky Method arrives amid a swell
of shows featuring folks well over retirement age such as Grace and Frankie, Murphy Brown, The Cool Kids. It’s an unexpected
result of the push for more diversity perhaps, which at its core is also a
campaign to reach a wider demographic. Its themes are universal, entertaining
and occasionally devastating.
Norm’s
grieving process starts with anger – lashing out at everyone, including a
mortuary bereavement counselor who says it may be hard to fulfill his wife’s
dying request: that she be buried in a casket made out of driftwood or wood from
an old shipwreck.
But
when he picks up the dry cleaning weeks after her passing, he finds among his
button-down shirts a dress she dropped off months ago. Anger melts into
despair, and he crumples into a chair, sobbing.
Clearly
this isn’t Netflix’s answer to HBO’s Curb
Your Enthusiasm, though it still is a satirical take on old Jewish guys,
L.A. and the industry. Lucky for legions of binge-watchers, The Kominsky Method follows its own
winning methodology. [Ali’s rating: 9 stars out of 10]
[Blogger's comment: There are some delightful casting choices in Chapter 10 of The Kominsky Method. Mindy is dating Martin (Paul Reiser) who is in his mid-sixties, so Sandy decides to call Mindy's mother, his ex-wife Ruth (Kathleen Turner) to discuss this, and we learn she's an American doctor working in a remote rural village in a central American country. Douglas, Turner and DeVito all starred in Romancing the Stone (1984) thirty-five years earlier. Also Norm reconnects with Madelyn (Jane Seymour) an old girlfriend from the sixties who wants to pick up where they left off now that Eileen has passed away.]
[Blogger's comment: There are some delightful casting choices in Chapter 10 of The Kominsky Method. Mindy is dating Martin (Paul Reiser) who is in his mid-sixties, so Sandy decides to call Mindy's mother, his ex-wife Ruth (Kathleen Turner) to discuss this, and we learn she's an American doctor working in a remote rural village in a central American country. Douglas, Turner and DeVito all starred in Romancing the Stone (1984) thirty-five years earlier. Also Norm reconnects with Madelyn (Jane Seymour) an old girlfriend from the sixties who wants to pick up where they left off now that Eileen has passed away.]
Labels:
comedy, drama, Netflix, tragedy
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