BETTER WITH POPCORN? –
Sept. 27, 2022 – Weaver takes this conflicted role in stride. The actress may be decades away from her breakthrough appearance in “Alien,” but she still conveys authority in her bearing, which makes her character’s fall that much harder.
But even an actress this good can’t elevate the film. It figures: Forbes’s 2014 directorial debut, “Infinitely Polar Bear” — a semi-autobiographical story inspired by her father’s bipolar illness — treated mental illness as ukulele-infused dramedy. “The Good House” strikes a similarly cloying tone. Despite Hildy’s complaints about the high price of coffee in her gentrifying town, the film’s folksy score (by Theodore Shapiro) sounds like music from a feature-length coffee commercial — granted, with a central performance whose notes of genuine defeat and regret work against the cozy air of provincial comfort.
