Michael Margetis sits down for another movie review with Alexander Payne’s Nebraska…
No one understands the plight of the aged American male quite like Alexander Payne. Easily one of the best filmmakers working today, he’s already given us three masterpieces (About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants) exploring the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy many men experience once they “settle down” in life.
While the aforementioned films do so with a flawed but ultimately likable protagonist, Nebraska gives us Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), a seemingly worthless alcoholic shit that’s really never done anything with his life. He has a wife, Kate (June Squibb), who thinks he’s a joke, two kids, Dave (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Oedenkirk), who resent him and supposedly a lot of people he owes money.
About ready to die, Woody receives some sweepstakes fraud mail claiming he’s won a million dollars. Instantly it gives him something to live for, and while his family tells him it’s a hoax, he refuses to believe it. His younger son Dave, a shitty electronics associate (HEY-O!), decides to humor his father and take him on a road trip to Lincoln, Nebraska to claim the “prize money.” Along the way they stop in Woody’s hometown for an ill-fated family reunion that brings the greed out of Woody’s extended family but also bonds Woody and Dave together in a way they never would have anticipated.
Like pretty much all of Payne’s films, Nebraska is set around an existential road trip where characters learn things about each other and themselves they wouldn’t have in normal circumstances. The main difference between Nebraska and Payne’s other films is the pacing with both the story and character development.
While many sequences of Nebraska are either down right hilarious, beautifully dramatic or a peculiar combination of the two, there is a lot of filler in between that is agonizingly bland. Perhaps it’s a statement of how bland the midwest really is — one five-minute sequence surrounds a half a dozen old farts sitting around a television reminiscing about who owned which car and what year they owned it– or perhaps it’s just poor writing that was aiming for something more humorous. Whatever it is, by the end of the movie you haven’t learned enough about these characters to really care about them. This is a story about a couple of Midwest nobodies who’s struggles seem trivial compared to our own. This is most likely because Nebraska is the only film Payne hasn’t at least co-written. While sporting many Payne-isms through-out, at it’s core Nebraska really doesn’t feel like an Alexander Payne film.
The strongest aspect of Nebraska is without question the performances. Bruce Dern deservedly won this year’s Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of Woody Grant. It’s a marvelously subtle performance where most of the emotion is played internally. Just look at his beaten down face and his sad puppy dog eyes, you’ve met this sad old man before. June Squibb, a shoe-in for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, generates most of film’s laugh lines and effortlessly steals every scene she is in.
Solid supporting work is delivered by that dude from Mr. Show and veteran bad-guy character actor Stacy Keach, whose karaoke rendition of “In the Ghetto” is both the funniest and the creepiest occurrence in the movie. The biggest surprise to come out of Nebraska is Will Forte, who completely sheds his momentous comedic presence to play the “straight man”. Much like Dern, Forte plays Dave with a lot of restraint but you can see the pain of his character heating to a boil behind his eyes. He’s that kid that never got love or support from his father all grown up. Be on the look out for an appearance by Devin Ratray (Buzz from Home Alone), as Woody’s convicted sex offender nephew.
Nebraksa isn’t the great tour-de-force emotional sucker punch I’ve come to expect from Payne. In fact, it’s easily his weakest film to date. This is not to say it’s bad in any way, just merely good as opposed to outstanding. Payne was on a roll after Election with four great movies in a row. With all those movies about car trips, he was bound to a hit a bump somewhere down the road. Thankfully, it was only a minor one.
Grade: B
