Pun Salad

One of Mrs. Salad's picks, watched through the magic of Netflix's streaming service. Wish I liked it better.

Michael Douglas plays real estate magnate and all-around curmudgeon Oren. His wife is dead, his son is a drug addict and headed to jail, and he's trying to unload his multi-million dollar Connecticut mansion. To simplify that, he moves into a vacant apartment in a complex overlooking the scenic waterfront. Where he encounters Leah, played by Diane Keaton: she's also (conveniently for script purposes) minus one spouse and trying to kindle a career/hobby as a lounge singer. Only problem is that she starts crying when she sings anything that reminds her of her dead hubby. It's easy to imagine that she's Annie Hall, forty years older.

And then the jail-bound son unexpectedly unloads his cute daughter into this situation. Oren has zero grandpa ambitions, so it falls to Leah to pick up the slack there. Guess what happens?

Presumably the title isn't meant to refer to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five catchphrase. A better guess might be that it's meant to evoke the Billy Joel song, except that it doesn't show up in the movie anywhere. Maybe they couldn't agree on financial terms for that.

I agree with the critics: it's a pretty half-hearted effort, not even bothering to make me care what happens to these rich people. Hence, the "dark moment" shared by all romcoms isn't that dark.

The script has a lot meant-to-be-clever lines that aren't actually.