Adulthood review Alex Winter's nastily comic crime noir as family intrigue over division of assets
Briefly

Adulthood review  Alex Winter's nastily comic crime noir as family intrigue over division of assets
"A bit of a throwback to the kind of noir-tinged black-comedy-dramas of yore where good people break very bad, this quietly ruthless film sticks to the template but throws in some new-fangled touches. It also draws on the talents of a cracking roster of supporting players, who add a substantial amount of texture and colour to the proceedings, not least among them the film's own director Alex Winter, best known for playing Bill opposite Keanu Reeves' Ted."
"In a peripheral but significant role, Winter plays a sad-sack stoner, the kind of tragic loser Bill might have grown up to be if he and Ted had never encountered George Carlin and his most excellent time machine. That said, something feels a bit undercooked here, perhaps due to Winter's direction or Michael MB Galvin's script, which seems to lack a little torque in the last turns of the screw."
"Meg (Kaya Scodelario) has outsourced the care of her widowed mother Judy (Ingunn Omholt) to home-help Grace (Billie Lourd, gloriously trashy) while Meg raises her kids and tries to get her business selling stuff on Facebook up and running. When Judy has a stroke, Meg's wannabe screenwriter brother Noah (Josh Gad) arrives in town and the two siblings must prepare for their parent's death and the division of assets."
A noir-tinged black-comedy-drama follows Meg, who has outsourced care of her widowed mother Judy to home-help Grace while raising her own children and trying to run a Facebook business. When Judy has a stroke, Meg's wannabe screenwriter brother Noah returns and the siblings prepare for their parent's death and division of assets. While sorting Judy's basement junk they discover a decades-old corpse walled up below, possibly a missing neighbour, which triggers a blackmail attempt from Grace. Cousin Bodie returns as a needy variable seeking connection. Strong supporting performances, especially Anthony Carrigan, add texture, but direction and script leave the ending feeling undercooked.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
[
|
]