Win Win

Grade: C+

Thomas McCarthy’s Win Win is a frustrating movie for me. This is because I love Thomas McCarthy movies. While he has only directed two movies prior to this both have been great, and both have very distinctly had his own personal style stamped on them. The Visitor is subtly beautiful and The Station Agent is one of the most likeable movies I’ve ever seen. I don’t have an exact word to describe McCarthy’s previous efforts but I know that they just make me happy in a way that is distinct to both those films. Certainly there are common themes amongst McCarthy films. They are often set in New Jersey, Bobby Cannavale is in most of them, they feature respected actors, they are rather minimalistic, and perhaps best of all they have a heavy foot in reality the likes of which you rarely see in movies. Mix that all up, add some charm and you have a McCarthy film that will leave you grinning from ear to ear.

Win Win had all this, but it just wasn’t the same. I enjoyed it just fine. It’s a fine movie and pretty much all the things I listed above are in it, but it just didn’t have the heart of McCarthy’s previous movies. I wanted it so bad to be just as pitch perfect as his other films, but it just wasn’t, and that bummed me out. So take this review at face value because while I wasn’t too high on it, my opinion is clearly skewed.

The story goes as follows. Paul Giamatti plays a small town lawyer named Mike. Mike has a wife (played by the delightful Amy Ryan), two daughters, and is a high school wrestling coach for a team that is terrible. Mike has two friends. One Stephen (played by Jeffrey Tambor) works with Mike and also helps to coach the wrestling team. His other friend Terry (Bobby Cannavale) is a successful businessman who is having troubles coping with his wife leaving him for the construction worker he hired to fix his house. Mike’s problem is that his small town practice is struggling. He’s not making enough money to fix basic things both at his home and at his work. Soon Mike sees an opportunity to help with these problems when ones of his wealthiest clients Mr. Poplar (Burt Young) is in a need of a new guardian. Mr. Poplar is in the early stages of dementia and while he still could live in his home by himself, he would need a guardian that could provide a lot of assistance. Seeing an opportunity to take on the money allotted to the guardian of Mr. Poplar, Mike offers to take on the role, but instead of helping to take care of him Mike just sends him to an old folk’s home while telling Mr. Poplar the judge made him do it.

A wrench gets thrown in this plan though when Mike is going to shut off Mr. Poplar’s pipes at his now empty house. On the doorstep of his place they find a high school aged boy. It turns out the kid is Mr. Poplar’s grandson who traveled all the way from Ohio(the movie is of course set in New Jersey) to escape his in and out of rehab mother. With no other choice Mike and his family are forced to take the kid (his name is Kyle) in. Kyle is an understandably quiet kid who, Mike soon learns, just happens to be a former state runner up for wrestling in the state of Ohio.

The story unfolds like how a lot of sports movies (not to say this is really a sports movie but it sort of is) do from here. Kyle brings new life to the down and out, ragtag bunch. They go from dead last to well… they win like one match, but still it’s progress. Everyone is affected by the new life Kyle brings to the team and for the most part all is well. The problem then starts when Kyle’s mom shows up. I won’t go much farther into the story because you really should go watch this movie if for nothing more than to support people who make good films, but you may be able to guess what kinds of trouble arises from there.

 The person who is most interestingly affected by Kyle’s presence (and leads to my favorite part of this movie) is Terry. After seeing Kyle wrestle (by Googling him) Terry decides to become an assistant coach. Due to his current boredom with his life Terry, instantly becomes way too into the team as well as a little too fond of Kyle. Not in a creepy way, but in an over excited way. See as I said earlier, Terry’s life sucks right now. Sure he has all this cool stuff (as we see from him casually playing Wii in his fancy condo) and money but that’s not what he is interested in. Terry just wants to be like a normal person, and even more importantly Terry just wants his wife back. Everyone else has lives and families, while all Terry has is things. He is the king alone in his castle with nobody to talk to (or for you film buffs: he is Charles Foster Kane alone in Xanadu). He needs the team and even more he needs Kyle to keep winning because those are the only good, human things in his life right now. It’s fun watching the very charismatic Cannavale get way too excited about a high school wrestling match or wear a suit to his first match as an assistant coach because he’s taking things way more seriously than everyone else, but at its heart this character is very real and sad.

In fact that character was just like the kind of characters I have come to expect from McCarthy movies. The problem was the rest of the characters just didn’t meet the same depth. Mike is sort of your typical Joe everyman, and while he is clearly flawed, he just feels too much like your average indie movie lead. Mike’s wife is spunky, fun, and has some fight in her (although a lot of this is because Amy Ryan is very much these things) but she too feels too much like a typical indie movie wife. And Kyle is interesting, but hardly a character you would want to carry a movie. Again, there is nothing wrong with any of these characters. They are better than probably 80% of characters you see in movies, but it just wasn’t on par with the rich characters I’m used to seeing in McCarthy’s other films.

I really hate to be so negative about a film that A. I did like B. is by a director I very much respect and C. has a relatively good and positive message (I mean this is the sense that there should be more strong women characters like Jackie (Mike’s wife) and it is a somewhat uplifting movie with characters you want to route for). It’s just not as good as McCarthy’s other movies, and if you know me you know that I have trouble getting past things like that. So while I gave it a C+, I still think you should definitely watch it and if you like it I can’t suggest McCarthy’s other movies (The Visitor and The Station Agent) enough.