By Tricia Olszewski
Flannel Pajamas is all about the red herrings that get ignored when a seemingly fabulous new relationship begins. The New York couple in this drama by writer-director Jeff Lipsky hit it off on a blind date and swooningly hasten to their wedding. He can save her from her bathtub-in-the-living-room apartment and says he wants to protect her; she can, uh, say that she loves him a lot, especially when he’s paying her bills. He doesn’t like her best friend and some of her family, but so what? They have luv—which, some allege, is all you need.
Except when it isn’t, of course. And especially when it’s unclear to an observer what draws the pair together in the first place. From the opening scene that shows the fateful first date, Stuart (Justin Kirk) comes off as slick and smarmy, while Nicole (Julianne Nicholson) seems kind of dim. Other characters crowd the setup—it’s a double date, and Stuart’s brother and Nicole’s morally scarlet best friend happen by—so the viewer is privy to only one of their exchanges before they’re free to declare that they like each other. Stuart works as a theater marketer, which, as he nearly admits, seems to mean professional liar: He does whatever it takes to create buzz, even if it means inventing actor bios or tailoring a show’s backstory to move rubes to buy tickets. You expect the fresh-faced Nicole, who initially says she doesn’t understand what exactly he does, to be put off. Instead she says, “That’s so smart!”
If you manage to suspend disbelief, though, and buy that something did in fact inspire them to start drooling “I love you”s all over each other, Flannel Pajamas can be an engrossing train wreck. (At 124 minutes, however, it’s at times a sluggish one.) Lipsky makes the movie feel like a play, a collection of before-and-after scenes from a marriage that are largely concise in displaying happiness or trouble, with crisp blackouts and set changes in between. So you see, for example, the moment that Stuart suggests Nicole move in with him. And, later, Nicole’s resentment when Stuart pushes her to undress in front of the windows of their new high-rise apartment after she’s pleaded that she’s too shy. Throughout, she’s generally the sensitive and emotionally open one, while he’s practical and prone to changing the subject whenever a conversation turns difficult.
The couple’s attraction seems merely dialogue-deep, and Lipsky’s talky script has other shortcomings. (Kirk bears partial responsibility for making Stuart oily from the very beginning. But really, wouldn’t any but the most desperate woman run when a guy trots out lines such as, “Do you want a puppy? All I can offer you is my heart” right after they meet?) Auxiliary characters, such as Stuart’s unstable brother, Jordan (Jamie Harrold), or the members of Nicole’s family whom Stuart doesn’t like, are also given jobs but little to no development, making many plot turns seem like they arrive out of nowhere.
But thanks to Nicholson, many of the couple’s awkwardly intimate scenes feel organic and much more realistic than the average romantic portrait. She finds nuances in Nicole that keep her from becoming unsympathetic—childish is worlds away from childlike—and Nicholson paints her character as warm, trusting, and vulnerable instead of irritatingly naive. And though Kirk’s Stuart is easy to dislike at the beginning of the relationship, he’s that much easier to hate and, once things sour, feel (slightly) sorry for. Kirk also shares a terrific scene with Rebecca Schull, who plays Nicole’s mother. As the camera nearly imperceptively circles around them, the two have a showdown when Nicole briefly ends up in the hospital. Schull displays a clenched, withering smile as her character tells her son-in-law that she never liked him and how bad he is for Nicole. It’s an extremely effective verbal slap in the face. And considering the superficial dancing that came before it, the conversation is a moment to cheer—both for Mom and the film itself.
Reign Over Me revolves around 9/11, but it’s likely the film will be known as Adam Sandler’s second attempt to go serious. Not Spanglish- or Click-serious—think more along the lines of Punch-Drunk Love. Writer-director Mike Binder certainly did, as here Sandler’s character is similar to the one he played in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 movie. In a lighter moment Sandler might have put it this way: “I’m Isolated Crazy Man. Give me some candy!”
Charlie (Sandler) isn’t the easiest person to reach out to, but his old college roommate, Alan (Don Cheadle), tries to anyway after they run into each other one day in New York. Charlie lost his wife and kids in the 9/11 attacks and has since shut down: Years later, he hasn’t gone back to work as a dentist, keeps dust covers over the furniture from his former life, and spends most of his time playing music and video games. He accepts Alan’s friendship but soon gets selfish with it, acting like a child as he teases his married friend into going out every night and not coming home until way later than he wants to. When Charlie starts taking the “fun” out of dysfunctional—he blows up at times, especially when Alan asks questions about his family—Alan, who’s also a dentist, is initially put off, but Charlie’s instability ultimately makes him want to help even more. Alan’s wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) isn’t exactly thrilled with the situation.
It’s true that Charlie is a very ill man. But viewers may sympathize more with the circumstances than the person. Binder gives Sandler free reign to go into full-on eccentric mode with ratty hair, twitchy mannerisms, and an infantile, mouth-full-of-peanuts delivery that’s irritating as hell. Some comedic scenes make Charlie seem lucid and likable, but more often he’s stubbornly uncommunicative and impossible for anyone but a mental-health professional to deal with. Quite frankly, no matter how sick you know a character is supposed to be, it’s difficult to watch a regressing jerk (especially at a bloated two-plus hours). A pushover like Alan isn’t fun company, either, though Cheadle brings his usual energetic charisma to the role of someone who tells his wife he couldn’t come home last night because he was “stuck in Charlie world.”
But once Charlie begins to open up—both to Alan and to a therapist (Liv Tyler)—Reign Over Me improves remarkably. (The title comes from the Who’s “Love, Reign O’er Me,” which is what Charlie listens to on giant headphones when he wants to shut out the world.) Eventually there is a glint in Sandler’s puppyish brown eyes that makes his character seem playful and, finally, compelling. The script at last succeeds in wrenching sympathy out of you: Charlie’s description of what happened that day will take you right back to it, and after he’s arrested for assault, a brutal hearing in which an attorney brings pictures of Charlie’s family shows that maybe Charlie’s reaction to the tragedy isn’t so extreme.
When Binder makes the story about Alan’s transformation, too, the film derails again: Suddenly, he’s a closed-off husband and realizes he “doesn’t want to be that guy.” There’s also a rather unbelievable happy ending to Charlie’s tale. But Reign Over Me’s winning moments are nearly enough to make you forgive its flaws—by the final scenes your gut has already been successfully punched.