This Is Where I Leave You: Mourning with Laughter

If you've seen the trailer for This Is Where I Leave You, you already know what to expect. Packed with a stellar cast, this movie is a who's who of acting veterans and comedy talent, all of whom are doing what they do best. Unfortunately, because of that large cast and their various stories, the end result is a Saturday Night Live-esque sketch show of a film that has many hilarious tales to tell, but not enough time to tell them in.

The movie follows the Altman family, a bunch of "Jewish atheists," who are forced to spend seven days together in their childhood home to sit shiva after their father dies. The family matriarch is Hillary (Jane Fonda), a massively liberal therapist who constantly embarrasses her children with her frankness and her impressive cleavage from a new boob job. Her adult children consist of Judd (Jason Bateman), who is dealing with the shock of discovering his wife has been cheating on him with his boss; Wendy (Tina Fey), who has had some tragedy in her past and has a somewhat loveless marriage in her present; Paul (Corey Stoll), the son who stayed behind to run the family store and is married to Judd's ex-girlfriend, Alice (Kathryn Hahn), who is desperately trying to get pregnant; and Phillip (Adam Driver), the horrifically incompetent baby of the family who has never amounted to anything but has now brought home an older woman (played by Connie Britton) as his "engaged to be engaged" fiancée.

That is just the back story of a partial list of characters: the movie then has to tell us what happens to them over the course of seven days and what they learn about their lives. The screenplay is written by Jonathan Tropper, based on his bestselling book of the same name, and he does a very creditable job of deftly weaving the stories of these disparate people together and coming up with humorous interludes to resolve most of their issues in a brief two hours. But I can't help but feel this is a tale that is better suited to a miniseries, where we would get to explore each character fully, instead of powering through the plot in farcical fashion. It's a valiant effort and it certainly works in a lot of places. But the casting feels a little too pat, with every actor doing the shtick that they are most famous for. And while the story beautifully blends comedy and drama, it veers off into zany and unpredictable areas that ultimately make it feel less grounded. 

I liked this movie enough that I want to read the novel and spend a little more time with these characters. The film is funny, sad, and sweet, but it careens wildly through all these emotions and comes to an abrupt end. It is full of lovely moments that have been cobbled together to make a vaguely unsatisfying whole. Translating good literature to film is difficult, and ultimately, This Is Where I Leave You bites off a little more than it can chew.

Wicked: Everything That's Great About Broadway

Wicked premiered on Broadway in 2003, two years after I first moved to New York. Last month, more than a decade after its premiere, I finally went to see the show. The musical is still playing to sold-out crowds at the Gershwin Theatre so you don't really need me to tell you to watch it. But, in case you're a procrastinating New Yorker like me, I'm going to anyway.

The show is based on Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. I read this book in college and couldn't understand why the musical was such a huge hit if it was based on such a massive and (in my opinion) dull tome. Thankfully, the musical takes extreme liberties with the story, resulting in a delightful and whimsical two and a half hours of musical theater. The story follows Glinda and Elphaba, the two girls who will grow up to become the Good Witch of the South and the Wicked Witch of the West who meet Dorothy during her adventures in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The green-skinned Elphaba is shunned by her family and schoolmates, but she has extraordinary powers of sorcery. She is a kind-hearted girl, who wants to stand up for the downtrodden, but over the course of the musical, we will see how her good intentions go awry and she transforms into the much misunderstood Wicked Witch. In the meantime, Glinda is a perky blonde, who lacks Elphaba's talent but has oodles of personality. We get to see how she navigates Oz's power structure to become the Good Witch and how her relationship with Elphaba matures over the years.

It's a complicated and powerful story about what it really means to be good or wicked and how much morality is in the eye of the beholder. But if you don't want to get deep, it is also a fantastic Broadway musical, brimming with beautiful costumes, stunning sets, and of course, one of the greatest scores ever performed on the Broadway stage. You can listen to the original Broadway cast recording with the powerhouse vocals of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, but the songs only truly sink in after you've watched them live on stage. I need to especially highlight Jenni Barber, who is currently playing Glinda on Broadway and delivered a brilliant rendition of "Popular." While no one could match Kristin Chenoweth's vocal prowess, Barber lent so much comic flourish to this song and added so many extra bits and side gags that it became a hysterical masterpiece.

That's the reason people keep returning to watch this show (and other Broadway gems) multiple times. The power of live theater is that it's constantly evolving, never stale, and the performance I saw will be completely different to what you see. However, Wicked has a solid foundation, with an intriguing story, brilliant music, and a tantalizing mix of comedy, drama, satire, and romance. The show seamlessly weaves in familiar elements from the Wizard of Oz in surprising ways that will delight any fan of that story, and everything is wrapped up rather beautifully at the end. It's a wonderful tale and well worth all the hype.

Coupling: Sexier British Friends

I first saw Coupling over a decade ago. PBS was randomly airing the series on Friday night (as is PBS's wont) and I instantly became hooked to this quirky British sitcom (as is my wont). As a huge Friends fan, Coupling was guaranteed to appeal to me, since it followed a group of six friends in London. However, thanks to the liberality of British television and the genius of creator Steven Moffat, these friends are infinitely more bizarre, witty and sex-crazed than the ones you've seen on American TV.

Steve and Susan (modeled after Steven Moffat and his wife Sue Vertue) are the central couple of the group. The pilot features their first date and we subsequently follow their relationship along four seasons. Steve (Jack Davenport) is a relatively sensible but typically insecure man, flummoxed by women and prone to hilarious rants about the feminine fascination for cushions or shoes. Susan (Sarah Alexander) is incredibly sensible and prone to frustration with her indecisive beau, so she struggles to patiently guide him along their relationship. Steve's best friend is Jeff (Richard Coyle), a bizarre Welshman who is obsessed with women yet terrified to talk to them and gets into the most unimaginably horrific and hilarious scrapes. Susan's best friend is Sally (Kate Isitt), a beautician who is terrified of growing old, being single, and bottom spreadage. Rounding out the cast are Jane (Gina Bellman) and Patrick (Ben Miles), Steve and Susan's promiscuous exes who manage to become entrenched in the group and get entangled in their various machinations. 

Like with Happy Endings, don't get hung up on the premise and instead focus on the execution. In the case of Coupling, the fact that Steven Moffat wrote every episode should be more than enough of a recommendation. Double entendres are flying, insanely complicated misunderstandings abound, and each episode is so densely packed with jokes and revelations that you can't believe they are just 30 minutes long. The show also has some particularly innovative episodes where they replay a situation from the point of view of multiple characters, or toggle back and forth between the men and the women to highlight the ridiculous gender dynamics at play. It is smart and silly, subtle and outrageous, and always a delight.

I recently re-watched the entire series on Netflix and found it endlessly fascinating. Despite having seen each episode multiple times in the past, I still picked up new jokes I had missed, or new innuendos that I didn't quite understand as a teen. Being a British show, there are just 28 episodes to enjoy, but each one is a gem, even the six episodes of the fourth season where Jeff was abruptly replaced by a wacky man called Oliver (Richard Mylan) since Richard Coyle left the show. Coupling didn't go past four series because Moffat got busy with Doctor Who, but to my joy, I just discovered that he wrote on a message board in 2006, to offer fans of the show some resolution as to what happened to all the characters. So load up your Netflix queue and get cracking. You are not complete until Jeff teaches you about the "Giggle Loop" and Steve has explained what the women of the world have been doing with their stockings.