InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 6
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FILM REVIEWS<br />
rote sitcom hijinks. Far from an innocent here, Sean repeatedly<br />
sends out mixed signals: Outwardly distancing himself from Ally<br />
while failing to intervene once it becomes clear her presence is a<br />
distraction, then sneaking off so they can talk about his fears<br />
and anxieties, the stuff he can’t bring up with Cassidy. A late<br />
revelation even calls into question how much bumping into Ally<br />
that first night was actually happenstance on his part. Yet, in<br />
keeping with its overall approach, which can either be<br />
interpreted as generosity or indecisiveness, the film refuses to<br />
come down on Sean as either a ditherer or a cad. Like seemingly<br />
everyone here, he’s just working through some things.<br />
That lack of clarity is most noticeable with Ally, whose actions<br />
are outwardly psychotic (in the grand tradition of The Onion<br />
headline “Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life [Person]<br />
Arrested”), but the film is ultimately too timid to offer much of an<br />
opinion about her either. Alternating between Machiavelian<br />
schemer (she searches out Cassidy’s parents and surreptitiously<br />
invites them to the wedding even though they’ve been cut out of<br />
her life for good reason) and a sympathetic ear for both Sean and<br />
Cassidy, it can be difficult to track Ally’s objectives on a<br />
scene-by-scene basis. Does Ally actually love Sean enough to<br />
break up his marriage, or does he just remind her of a time when<br />
she had hope for her future? Have her years producing reality TV<br />
hardened her to messy human emotions and rendered her thirsty<br />
for artificial drama? And is this all merely a passing fad, not<br />
coincidentally timed to a lull in her career?<br />
Co-written by Franco and Brie (married in real life, the actress<br />
previously appearing in the filmmaker’s Airbnb thriller, The<br />
Rental), the film is caught between good-natured bawdiness and<br />
touchy-feely earnestness. In any given moment, we might get a<br />
running gag about Ally walking in on her 60-something mother<br />
having sex, or the film indulging Brie’s professed love of nudism,<br />
or a heart-to-heart about Sean’s need for control stemming from<br />
his abandonment issues, or the suggestion that Cassidy’s desire<br />
to remain on tour with her rock band mirrors Ally’s own<br />
professional aspirations. And the film’s unwillingness to go for<br />
blood, always quickly absolving its characters of their relative<br />
transgressions, ends up leaving a lot of meat on the bone. Not<br />
vicious enough to work as cringe comedy yet too irreverent and<br />
loaded up with groan-worthy pop culture references to be truly<br />
bittersweet, Somebody I Used to Know – like the characters<br />
themselves – just feels perpetually torn. <strong>—</strong> ANDREW DIGNAN<br />
DIRECTOR: Dave Franco; CAST: Alison Brie, Jay Ellis, Kiersey<br />
Clemons, Danny Pudi, Haley Joel Osment; DISTRIBUTOR: Amazon<br />
Prime Video; STREAMING: February 10; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 46 min.<br />
SHARPER<br />
Benjamin Caron<br />
In the course of that rich history of films about con artists, the<br />
appeal has almost always been to watch largely amoral<br />
professionals execute their perfect plans in order to strip some<br />
rich jerk of their money. What Sharper presupposes is… maybe it<br />
isn’t? The result is a mostly diverting couple of hours, but one<br />
unfortunately marred by the fact that it’s all so bizarrely square.<br />
The film is broken into chapters, each of which, sort of, focus on<br />
an individual character. First, we have Tom (Justice Smith), who’s<br />
working at a bookstore when he’s taken with one of his<br />
customers, Sandra (Briana Middleton). After a requisite<br />
meet-cute and a nice date (plus an entire opening sequence <strong>—</strong><br />
probably accidentally, but still <strong>—</strong> that plays almost as a carbon<br />
copy of Clarence and Alabama meeting in True Romance), there’s<br />
a lovely montage showing their burgeoning romance. And, as it<br />
turns out, Tom also comes from money <strong>—</strong> a lot of it.<br />
We then bounce back in time to see Sandra’s introduction to Max<br />
(Sebastian Stan). He lifts her up out of addiction and parole<br />
officer problems, training her to become an expert confidence<br />
trickster. At this point, we’re also introduced to Madeline<br />
(Julianne Moore), who might be Max’s lover but is instead<br />
pretending to be his mother. You see, she’s dating Richard<br />
Hobbes (John Lithgow), a big wheel at some hedge fund who also<br />
happens to be Tom’s father. You see where this is all headed: The<br />
whole thing is perfectly cromulent. The time-jumping narrative<br />
helps Sharper to maintain a modicum of suspense throughout,