Chews Reviews - 'At Middleton'
By Gary Chew | January 28, 2014 | “ At Middleton” is a movie that surprised me in an inverse manner. The entire first act of Ada...
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2014/01/chews-reviews-at-middleton.html
By Gary Chew | January 28, 2014 |
“At Middleton”
is a movie that surprised me in an inverse manner. The
entire first act of Adam
Rodgers' romantic comedy, set on an actual but fictitiously
named modern day
college campus, bored me with nagging ruthlessness. “Oh my
God, What's the
running time on this turkey,” my mind
whispered.
George (Andy Garcia), a cardiac surgeon, and
his son Conrad
(Spencer LoFranco) have come to Middleton for the old
college tour. Is this
where Conrad will begin his higher education?
Edith (Vera Farmiga), has come for the same
Middleton tour with
Audrey, her daughter, played by Taissa Farmiga. Audrey is
also on the cusp of
university life.
The picture begins by establishing the tour
which is made up of
a large of group of parents and their almost adult children.
Justin (Nicholas
Braun), the currently enrolled student tour guide, has
several speeches for
purposes of exposition. Unfortunately, director Rodgers and
Glenn German, who
wrote the script, want you to laugh from the outset, and
give their Justin
character lines they intended to be funny. Some of the
things Braun says as
Justin tend to embarrass insofar as getting a
laugh.
It's not until
well into “At Middleton”
the moviegoer gets to enjoy
bursts of delight and
touching emotion as George and Edith get to know the other
better since, like
me, the tour and the student tour guide are boring them.
They take a tour of
their own, and of course both George and Edith are happily
married to their
respective spouses, who have chosen not to be at Middleton
on this day.
Conrad and Audrey, in parallel, are allowed
shorter scenes to
sharpen their acquaintance without benefit of the respective
parent present.
Audrey even sips twosome tea with a prospective adviser
she's read, and has
impressed her thinking. Tom Skerritt plays the Middleton
prof. His name is
Emerson.
“Boneyard” is
the gray-haired student radio station deejay Conrad spends
time with. Like much
of the movie, the broadcast schtick is pretty silly. Peter
Reigert does the best
he can in the “Boneyard” role. The only elderly guy I've
ever seen in a student
radio station was its chief
engineer.
“At Middleton” is a family movie
that boasts family
members in the cast. Vera Farmiga is seen in her second film
with her younger
sister, Taissa. Their first together was “Higher Ground.”
Andy Garcia plays some
scenes in “At Middleton” with his daughter, Daniella
Garcia-Lorido. Her
character is a student named Daphne. Daniella had a bit part
in a 2005 movie in
which her father starred and was the
director.
Andy Garcia and Vera Farmiga are first rate
actors. I loved
Garcia in the 2009 picture “City Island” and Farmiga was
great as director and
star for her excellent 2011 film “Higher Ground.” It's in
“Higher Ground” that
Taissa does the younger character her older sister plays as
the lead. With such
talent, it's not surprising “Middleton” finds the way to
better
moments.
Two scenes between the elder Garcia and
Farmiga stand out. One
shows the couple chatting on a campus bench under a large
tree. They're making
up their own definitions about who students are that
randomly walk by. The
second is a quite powerful scene. George and Edith spy on a
Middleton acting
class until the teacher calls on them to improvise for a
long moment about their
relationship --- the instructor thinking that George and
Edith are a
married-to-each-other couple.
Good stuff
here, and an important plot point for their happenstance,
on-campus meeting to
take an enormous step forward to the conclusion of
a
predictable
movie that, at times, rises to the good occasion it sets for
itself.
I was able to
see “At Middleton” before its local opening. Sacramento's Crest
Theater ran the
film via satellite from the East coast under the auspices of
the New York Film
Critics Series. Several movie theaters across the U.S.
participate in monthly
NYFS showings that include principal players and filmmakers
live on stage
interacting with the audience.
Copyright
© 2014 by Gary Chew. All rights
reserved.
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