Entertainment Squad
I’m always a little suspicious of movies with the ‘drama/comedy’ label — nearly all of the time this means a heavy dramatic movie with a few jokes thrown in, or maybe simply one with normally comedic actors pulling off dramatic scenes. It’s an easier trick or balance to pull off with a TV show — the best out there right now is Shrinking, which knows how to make you laugh or sob as needed, but part of that is the time to build up characters you care about. And there’s something cathartic about laughing after crying or vice versa, but it’s a difficult place to get to, so I respect the effort, if rarely the execution.
In Fidelity comes from director/writer Rob Margolies and he seems to be quite pleased with itself — the very title being a play on ‘infidelity’ except here it’s actually because maybe they are ‘in fidelity’ after all, right? So it’s ironic — the perfect name for a ‘tragicomic’ tale, except that this story is really just a drama. The movie stars Chris Parnell (the king of never breaking on Saturday Night Live) and Cara Buono (from Mad Men and Stranger Things) as Lyle and Holly Ayker, a long married couple living in an apartment in New York that are in a normal, healthy relationship.
But this gets challenged when Holly gets medical news that is essentially terminal — and suddenly the two are thinking about what else they might want to do to stuff in before it’s too late. Holly muses that she’s only ever slept with one person, her husband — and although that’s okay, it’s a shame she never had her ‘crazy’ phase. But she assures Lyle that she doesn’t want anything else, despite the impending end — but Lyle is conflicted about it.
This is shaken up by meeting their neighbor, an older rock star of some level, Hoyt Johnston (Dennis Haysbert), who is immediately very charismatic and Holly is obviously charmed by him. So the question arises — can they ‘push’ at the relationship even being where they are? At the same time their classically rebellious early 20s daughter Greta (Willow Shields) is trying out some new nude artistic nonsense that is fairly cliched and Greta speaks in a sort of flat, emotionally void manner that seems also to be a bit of a cliched perspective of the nihilistic Gen-Z types. And her parents aren’t even sure whether or not to tell her yet about Holly’s situation.
Their batty and ‘zany’ friend Ethel (Ileana Douglas, who could do this sort of thing in her sleep), is supportive but also clearly weird in that ‘oddly close friend of a married couple’ way. She’s another longtime comic character actor who is doing her best to raise the comedy bar here, but it’s hard given the material.
I would say that the dialogue of the older people has more nuance in general, although this is also helped by having a lot of warmth and depth given in those performances. I’ve admired Chris Parnell’s work for a long time, and he’s had very few live action roles in the last decade and nearly no dramatic ones — which is understandable as he’s a stellar voice actor and a hilarious comedic performer. He was perhaps the funniest supporting player on 30 Rock with his Dr. Spaceman character, which is no small feat.
Here his suffering, loving character is really in a world of misery and pain, and he handles that well, as does Cara Buono (although we’ve already seen her do drama well), but I wouldn’t say there was really anything that comic here. And the situation lends itself to some level of tricky comedy in the right situation, but doesn’t quite get there.
Ultimately I don’t dislike the movie — if it was more considered a ‘romantic drama’ I think I’d be more forgiving of its perspective and dialogue, but it really never makes me laugh or even grunt in amusement — but the acting elevates it, and it’s a well-shot movie too. Was it supposed to make me sad? I don’t know, but that’s what it did.
In Fidelity has a run time of 1 hour 28 minute, and is not rated.
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