Edie Falco left adrift in muddled ‘I’ll Be Right There’
Great cast, evocative settings and hard truths about parenting – all part of the family comedy “I’ll Be Right There.” Yet with all that going for it, director Brandon Walsh works overtime blending it into dumbfounding pap featuring more cringes than laughs. And in so doing, it lays waste to yet another fabulous turn by “Sopranos” vet Edie Falco.
She plays Wanda, a 50-something, divorced mother of two whose life revolves around shepherding her dysfunctional brood through one crisis after another while leaving little time to address her own obvious needs. There’s a lot of Carmela Soprano in Wanda: fierce, tough and devoted to keeping her splintered clan intact. But there’s also a host of cliched affectations exhibited by her that are reminiscent of a failed sitcom pilot.
The result is a wildly uneven character profile that veers so far outside the realm of reality that none of it feels organic or lived in. And like a sitcom, it’s been assigned an episodic structure by screenwriter Jim Beggarly who sets off a series of dumpster fires requiring Wanda to extinguish while flitting about Pearl River, N.Y., in her vintage blue Buick Century station wagon. Here’s a rundown:
Her recovering drug-addict son, Mark (“Ozark’s” Charlie Tahan), has been arrested; her whiny, hugely pregnant daughter, Sarah (Kayli Carter), is insistent that she and her baby daddy, Eugene (Jack Mulhern), have a church wedding Wanda can’t afford; her chain-smoking 70-something mother, Grace (“Succession” standout Jeannie Berlin), is convinced she has lung cancer; and her ex, Henry (Bradley Whitford), is having second thoughts about cashing Wanda in for a much-younger wife who’s saddled him with a pair of rowdy boys and a babe in arms.
As if that wasn’t enough, Wanda is tasked with juggling a pair of sexual relationships with her impossibly good-natured boyfriend, Marshall (Michael Rapaport), and young college professor gal pal, Sophie (“Black Bird’s” Sepideh Moafi), who is proposing that Wanda relocate with her for a new gig at Boston University. But wait, there’s more to this daytime soap parody masquerading as a movie. And that would be Albert (Michael Beach), a hunky, middle-aged fireman who’s had his eye on Wanda since high school.
Got all that? I’m sure you’re as spent reading it as I am typing it. It’s just much too much matter for one 97-minute movie to accommodate before bursting like an over-inflated balloon. The only constant is Falco, whose everywoman appeal keeps you dedicated to a movie that has zero business succeeding even amid the lowest of expectations. At the same time, you pity her being trapped within such an unworthy project.
Still, some individual scenes sparkle, particularly those in which Wanda engages in meaningful one-on-one conversations with her mother, son and Albert, the designated “Magical Negro” who helps guide his overwrought crush on the path to self-salvation. But these are rare, eclipsed by bursts of annoying hysterics on the part of Carter as Wanda’s self-centered spawn who is overdosing on late-pregnancy hormones.
Speaking of Carter’s Sarah, why in this day and age would a woman take such extreme measures to get hitched before delivering a baby? That notion feels almost as out of touch as the numerous aspersions cast on Wanda for her same-sex dalliances. Geez, how behind the times can you be? But I’ll say it once again, this claptrap has Edie Falco top-billed, and with that, you can never go wrong. Well, to a point. It all depends on your tolerance for overly contrived, underdeveloped drivel. Some might find it entertaining, but I suspect far more will deem “I’ll Be Right There” a tad short of all there.
Movie review
I’ll Be Right There
Rated: Not rated
Cast: Edie Falco, Jeannie Berlin, Bradley Whitford, Kayli Carter, Charlie Tahan, Michael Rapaport, Sepideh Moafi, Michael Beach and Jack Mulhern
Director: Brendan Walsh
Writer: Jim Beggarly
Runtime: 97 minutes
Where: In theaters now before streaming on Sept. 27
Grade: C
