The comedy is depressing in this sad ‘Fantasy Life’
Losing both of her parents and being diagnosed with cancer has made the past year a living hell for Amanda Peet. As if that wasn’t enough misery, she now must contend with the slings and arrows critics will be hurling at her new film, “Fantasy Life.” No matter that she’s the best thing in it. Not when character actor Matthew Shear’s writing-directing debut is too far gone to be mitigated by a single performance.
How languid is it? Let’s just say it’s a mystery how it ever got past the development stage. A more incomplete film I cannot recall. The editing is slapdash, and the writing is undernourished, with scant attention to character development and pacing. The film drags on, telling the facile tale of Shear’s clumsy 34-year-old nebbish pursuing Peet’s wealthy, 51-year-old, clinically depressed heiress, who, I might add, is married with three young daughters and a stalled acting career. What chance does the nerdy frog have of winning the heart of a princess just short of being old enough to be his mother?
Well, a pretty good one when Shear is in charge of sketching out his character’s fate. Of course, he’s going to win her heart, albeit temporarily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it, because we don’t. Never in a million years would Peet’s Dianne Cohen ponder sacrificing everything to be with a hapless dork like Sam. Not only does he always look like an unmade bed, but he’s also the family’s panic-attack-prone manny, a job inexplicably provided to him by his shrink (Judd Hirsch), who also just happens to be Dianne’s father-in-law.
It’s all so divorced from reality that you cannot help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, especially when Sam’s competition is Dianne’s hunky husband, David, portrayed by the always easy on the eyes Alessandro Nivola (aka Ralph Lauren on FX’s “Love Story”). True, David is a bit of a pompous ass who prefers chasing the bottle and his rock-star dreams instead of attending to his family, but it’s clear that, in his own brutish way, he loves Dianne dearly. So, what’s the point? Are we to root for a dork like Sam to blossom into a homewrecker at David’s expense? Not happening. Heck, I had a hard time even tolerating Shear’s Sam, let alone being engaged by him.
What’s to like? He’s awkward, boring, and not particularly attractive. Oh, yeah, he’s also an antisemitic Jew, as if we’re to find that and his ethnic slurs funny. And why would Hirsch’s Fred even consider siccing this sicko on his son’s family? It makes no sense. But then nothing in “Fantasy Life” does.
Either Shear has no interest in exploring the inner lives of his characters, or he doesn’t know how to write them. I suspect it’s more the latter, given his film’s utter lack of depth. It’s all surface, much like Sam’s “feelings” for Dianne. Never do we see him attempting to pick her brain, hoping to break through her thick, insecure shell. Instead, he merely watches her old movies, TV shows, or ogles her many publicity shots, suggesting he only digs her for her superior looks and status. Kinda sexist, if you ask me.
The lack of a reason to care is compounded by a botched editing job that too often omits the connecting tissue needed to explain why unintroduced characters are popping up at the family’s dinner table, or David sporting a neck injury from a drunk-driving crash we never saw. It’s a mess.
But Peet, who also serves as a producer, maintains enough of a presence to keep you mildly interested. But she can’t create chemistry with Shear that simply does not exist. She’s much more appealing opposite Nivola and co-stars Hirsch and Andrea Martin as Dianne’s in-laws and Bob Balaban and Jessica Harper as her stinking rich parents. Of the older stars, Balaban’s Lenny ingratiates most, largely because he wisely shares our growing distaste for Sam.
The one thing Shear gets right is the locations, Brooklyn Heights in the opening half of the film and Martha’s Vineyard on the back nine. If only he’d paid as much attention to his script and lackluster direction. “Fantasy Life” isn’t a terrible film (it won the audience award at the 2025 SXSW fest), but it’s also not a very good one. It just sorta exists without purpose or meaning, rendering it less a fantasy and more a mind-numbing hallucination.
Movie review
Fantasy Life
Rated: R for brief drug use, some sexual references and language
Cast: Amanda Peet, Matthew Shear, Alessandro Nivola, Judd Hirsch, Bob Balaban, Andrea Martin, Jessica Harper and Holland Taylor
Director: Matthew Shear
Writer: Matthew Shear
Runtime: 91 minutes
Where: In theaters March 27 (limited)
Grade: C-
