Ratings
The Daily: 3 of 5 stars
More on 'Family Tree'
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“The Family Tree” opens on an idyll of suburban lawns, driver’s ed lessons and high school locker rooms — a sure giveaway, in 2011, that disquiet and domestic sexual frustration are afoot. And are they ever: Our first glimpse of the Burnett family is at therapy, taxing each other and their counselor, who promptly tosses them out. “I bet we’re the first family ever to get fired by their therapist,” muses Burnett son Eric (Max Theiriot), who obviously hasn’t seen “American Beauty” or “Little Miss Sunshine” or any of the numerous other dramas of family dysfunction made in the last couple of decades.
“The Family Tree” is indeed another quirky independent in this vein, directed by Vivi Friedman in her feature-length debut. But it is a determinedly weird one, half improbable slapstick, half obligatory reassuring murmurs about the sanctity of the nuclear family, no matter how odd. In the former mode, Friedman’s film can be near great in spots; in the latter, well, she’s hardly the first to reaffirm this particular hard-to-kill platitude.
Anyway, what a family! Pater familias Jack (Dermot Mulroney) is an expressionless lump, beaten into weary apathy by a sadistic corporate job and his wife, Bunnie (Hope Davis), who conducts affairs, belittles her own children and organizes benefits for charity with equal aplomb. “What, pancreatic cancer kills that many people?” we hear her say into the phone. “That’s great!”
Their progeny are, predictably, unhappy people: Daughter Kelly (Britt Robertson) is profane and pretends to be promiscuous; Eric, meanwhile, is drawn to religion, target shooting and creepy father figures. He keeps a gun hidden in his Bible and a neon cross (perhaps he’s also interested in the work of Dan Flavin?) buzzing on his bedroom wall. Meanwhile, there are peeping-Tom teenagers pleasuring themselves in the trees outside and a randy father-son duo next door, at least one of whom comes over to enact racially charged rape fantasies with Bunnie while Jack is at work, leering at the office secretary (Christina Hendricks, reprising her “Mad Men” role to confusing effect).
It’s during one of these ski-masked sessions that neighbor Simon (Chi McBride) accidentally knocks Bunnie unconscious, landing her in the hospital, her memory wiped blank. The doctors think Bunnie may have been raped — opening the door for a much darker movie — but instead she merely reverts to the rosy, early days of her marriage to Jack, who finds her renewed love for him even more confusing than the fact that she can’t recognize their two children.
Exposition of just how the two of them got here ensues: Jack explains to Bunnie and us how her mother is rich and controlling, and gently retraces the manner in which Bunnie’s once-kind nature has been subverted by frustration and boredom. “What do I like?” she asks at the family dinner table. “Uh, diseases?” is the response. Kelly copes with suddenly having a mother who might actually like her by striking up a flirtation with the school’s lone mohawked punk (John Patrick Amedori); Eric resigns from the band of roving Christians who beat up the local druggies in God’s name in favor of a nearly adult friendship with the same guy.
Families both real and metaphorical either built or restored, the Burnetts careen into a gun-filled third act that calls to mind both the cartoonishly violent end of “Heathers” and — in the family’s contrived collision with a couple of local teenage toughs — the more socially convoluted moments of Paul Haggis’ “Crash.”
It’s a thoroughly random stew, incisively funny in spots, ineffective and broad in others. But “The Family Tree” is never less than really strange, and in that respect, it’s a better argument for the every-family-is-a-unique-and- special-snowflake school of filmmaking than most bathetic suburban dramedies.
The Daily: 3 of 5 stars
More on 'Family Tree'
IMDB
Official Website
“The Family Tree” opens on an idyll of suburban lawns, driver’s ed lessons and high school locker rooms — a sure giveaway, in 2011, that disquiet and domestic sexual frustration are afoot. And are they ever: Our first glimpse of the Burnett family is at therapy, taxing each other and their counselor, who promptly tosses them out. “I bet we’re the first family ever to get fired by their therapist,” muses Burnett son Eric (Max Theiriot), who obviously hasn’t seen “American Beauty” or “Little Miss Sunshine” or any of the numerous other dramas of family dysfunction made in the last couple of decades.
“The Family Tree” is indeed another quirky independent in this vein, directed by Vivi Friedman in her feature-length debut. But it is a determinedly weird one, half improbable slapstick, half obligatory reassuring murmurs about the sanctity of the nuclear family, no matter how odd. In the former mode, Friedman’s film can be near great in spots; in the latter, well, she’s hardly the first to reaffirm this particular hard-to-kill platitude.
Anyway, what a family! Pater familias Jack (Dermot Mulroney) is an expressionless lump, beaten into weary apathy by a sadistic corporate job and his wife, Bunnie (Hope Davis), who conducts affairs, belittles her own children and organizes benefits for charity with equal aplomb. “What, pancreatic cancer kills that many people?” we hear her say into the phone. “That’s great!”
Their progeny are, predictably, unhappy people: Daughter Kelly (Britt Robertson) is profane and pretends to be promiscuous; Eric, meanwhile, is drawn to religion, target shooting and creepy father figures. He keeps a gun hidden in his Bible and a neon cross (perhaps he’s also interested in the work of Dan Flavin?) buzzing on his bedroom wall. Meanwhile, there are peeping-Tom teenagers pleasuring themselves in the trees outside and a randy father-son duo next door, at least one of whom comes over to enact racially charged rape fantasies with Bunnie while Jack is at work, leering at the office secretary (Christina Hendricks, reprising her “Mad Men” role to confusing effect).
It’s during one of these ski-masked sessions that neighbor Simon (Chi McBride) accidentally knocks Bunnie unconscious, landing her in the hospital, her memory wiped blank. The doctors think Bunnie may have been raped — opening the door for a much darker movie — but instead she merely reverts to the rosy, early days of her marriage to Jack, who finds her renewed love for him even more confusing than the fact that she can’t recognize their two children.
Exposition of just how the two of them got here ensues: Jack explains to Bunnie and us how her mother is rich and controlling, and gently retraces the manner in which Bunnie’s once-kind nature has been subverted by frustration and boredom. “What do I like?” she asks at the family dinner table. “Uh, diseases?” is the response. Kelly copes with suddenly having a mother who might actually like her by striking up a flirtation with the school’s lone mohawked punk (John Patrick Amedori); Eric resigns from the band of roving Christians who beat up the local druggies in God’s name in favor of a nearly adult friendship with the same guy.
Families both real and metaphorical either built or restored, the Burnetts careen into a gun-filled third act that calls to mind both the cartoonishly violent end of “Heathers” and — in the family’s contrived collision with a couple of local teenage toughs — the more socially convoluted moments of Paul Haggis’ “Crash.”
It’s a thoroughly random stew, incisively funny in spots, ineffective and broad in others. But “The Family Tree” is never less than really strange, and in that respect, it’s a better argument for the every-family-is-a-unique-and- special-snowflake school of filmmaking than most bathetic suburban dramedies.
