Director: Noah Pritzker
Writer: Noah Pritzker
Stars: Griffin Dunne, James Norton, Miles Heizer, Rosanna Arquette
Synopsis: Manhattan dentist Peter Pearce is facing a midlife crisis after his wife of 35 years leaves him. On the spur of the moment, he books a trip to Tulum, Mexico, only to crash his son’s bachelor party.
It sounds like a half-baked Hangover retread, or perhaps a version of American Wedding where Eugene Levy’s Mr. Levenstein is the one to threaten his son’s nuptials rather than the almighty Stifler. But Noah Pritzker’s wry and honest dramedy Ex-Husbands – which sees a father inadvertently crash his eldest’s bachelor trip while on a personal journey of his own design – is careful to be light on tigers and face tattoos in favor of heavy emotional breakthroughs, ones so purposefully crafted that they hit home, even if our homes have never dealt with the same unease in an explicit fashion. Pritzker’s emphasis on making growth and reflection the pillars of his sophomore feature doesn’t abuse the viewer with psychotherapy-friendly personal revelations as much as it introduces them as unique individual scenarios for its characters to work through in real time. What could have been a lazy, bro-happy raunch fest about what happens to our testicles when we age instead becomes a male-heavy dramedy focused on the lessons we learn both for and about ourselves as we get older, wiser, and occasionally, lonelier.
Originally written as a salve in the aftermath of his own parents’ decision to separate after 35 years of marriage, Ex-Husbands shares some thematic and spiritual tissue with Pritzker’s 2015 directorial debut, Quitters, which followed a young man’s search for found family after his mother checks into rehab and his relationship with his father crumbles in kind. The former, however, is a more confident (and interesting) step into the independent filmmaking landscape for Pritzker, whose assured direction and few-frills script is the indication of someone more seasoned than his young career might otherwise indicate. Better still, it’s a tale of masculinity that isn’t too eager to prove itself as a modern rejection of deservedly oft-ired tropes; it would rather eschew that toxicity in a manner as natural Griffin Dunne once felt in a zany thriller directed by a young Martin Scorsese.
Not that Dunne couldn’t feasibly slot back into the singular vision of After Hours’ Manhattan underworld today, but the now-grizzled veteran of more understated dramatic work feels right at home in Pritzker’s rendering of New York. Plus, Rosanna Arquette isn’t the onset of a terrifying evening in the city that never sleeps in this setting; she’s merely filing for divorce. The unexpected news sends Dunne’s Peter Pearce into something of a personal rut, not least because Arquette’s Maria seems to have been inspired to pull the ripcord by Peter’s own father (Richard Benjamin), who abruptly shares that he is leaving Peter’s mother after 50 some-odd years of marriage for a slew of half-baked reasons that amount to a state of late-in-life boredom. As the opening credits roll prior to the film they’re seeing that afternoon at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater (much of Ex-Husbands’ Manhattan-set sequences maintain an authenticity that New Yorkers should recognize, cinephiles or not), so, too, do Pritzker’s titles. By this point, the film’s whip-smart, mature tone has already been set in motion with more sincerity than most seasoned directors feel the need to employ.
What follows keeps apace, with more marital/familial snags resulting in unearthed tensions coupled with newfound common ground, two narrative aspects that only work as well as they do because we believe that the Pearces – a nuclear family in every sense of the word – have plenty of shared issues, too. When we first meet Nick (an understated, soulful James Norton) and his eventual fiancé, Thea (Rachel Zeiger-Haag), they’re the embodiment of the picture that sits next to the phrase “meet cute” in a dictionary; it’s a slight, delicately-crafted prologue filled with shared smiles that indicate the potential for a more meaningful future together. Six years later, a few months before their wedding, we come to realize how difficult things have gotten at home thanks to Nick’s lack of writerly ambition and Thea’s urge for a stable future. Nick doesn’t share the nature of his inner turmoil with his brother, Mickey (Miles Heizer), who planned an epic weekend in Tulum, Mexico for the former’s bachelor party. Naturally, the somber Peter has unknowingly booked a trip to the same resort on the same weekend for some much-needed bumming in the sun. Once word of this mishap reaches the groom, Peter ensures his boy that he won’t even know he’s there.
Of course, that wouldn’t make for much of a movie, so Nick, Mickey, and the groom’s dopey gaggle of bros include Peter in their getaway’s proceedings, making their elder feel seen, accepted, and loved, all of which had been lacking from his life prior to his vacation. Yet despite Pritzker’s insistence on keeping his characters connected in a shared space, a distance between them remains, one that necessitates a number of exposition-heavy dialogues that afford the Pearce men opportunities to explain how and why they’ve landed in their respective set of circumstances. Peter is getting divorced; Nick’s relationship is on the ropes; Mickey hasn’t been able to meaningfully connect with a romantic partner since coming out, and soon finds himself entangled in a complicated affair with a married friend of his older brother’s; they all frequently wax poetically about why these situations are difficult to be in, and how easy solutions have been difficult to come by. Thankfully, there’s never an absence of thoughtfulness in Pritzker’s writing, thus keeping Ex-Husbands optimistic in the midst of its slew of seemingly dour situations. In other words, there’s a future for each of these men, even if it isn’t quite the one they imagined they would be embarking on when their stories began.
That core notion is aided most by the main trio’s performances as the male members of a family in need of a compass to point each of them toward their individual north stars, though it’s undoubtedly Dunne whose work most stands apart from that of the film’s ensemble. His turn here is quietly reminiscent of his time on NBC’s family drama This Is Us, though there was an anger to his character on that show that Peter eschews in favor of existing as a kettle eager to boil over. Once he does, the inevitable screech is one that we accept given how much life we’ve witnessed over the previous 90 minutes, in all its pain and glory. That’s also precisely why it doesn’t matter that Ex-Husbands doesn’t break the mold. It’s focus on proving that we’re never stuck inside the molds our lives present us with is what really counts.
Ex-Husbands will be available to rent on PVOD on March 24.
