A lot less out-and-out funny than the marketing campaign made it out to be, The Savages is still very enjoyable and features one great performance and one pretty good performance from the two leads actors.
The great performance comes from Philip Seymour Hoffman while the pretty good one comes from Laura Linney, a rare non-relavatory outing from her. The two play a brother and sister who don’t see each other very often but who are once again brought together by the sickness and impending death of their aging father.
The marketing included a focus on the handful of funny scenes from the movie, scenes whose humor generally comes from the very human interactions between the siblings. While I don’t feel the campaign was misleading in any way, it did present a movie that was more in the Juno-type vein than something that’s much more serious-minded.
Hoffman’s performance is note-perfect. He portrays the son/brother as someone who is kind of floundering in his life but who is at least able to function as an adult even while obviously suffering from a variety of emotional issues, most of which are tied to the fact that both father and mother were absent. Linney’s character is a bit more broadly comic, a woman who seems to give in to every self-destructive impulse she has and whose only comfort is self-medicating with whatever pain-killers or other drugs cross her path.
While neither of their arcs really go anywhere until the last 15 minutes, Hoffman simply seems to do more with what he’s given in the time leading up to that than Linney does. She’s very good but just doesn’t seem to be up in this instance to taking the character off the page. For me, at least, this isn’t her best performance and yes it pains me to say that.
Still, The Savages is both interesting and explorative, striking a number of poignant, interesting and even sometimes funny chords.
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Chris Thilk