Director: Michael J. Weithorn
Writer: Michael J. Weithorn
Stars: Kyra Sedgwick, Kevin Bacon, Judd Hirsch
Synopsis: Cynthia Rand is a buttoned-up New Yorker married to a brilliant professor 25 years her senior. She begins feeling the effects of her husband’s advancing age on their relationship, just as her world is turned upside down by the arrival of sharp but chronically underachieving security guard Stan Olszewski.
Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon have been married for 36 years and have starred beside one another in four different films over that span, but it’s safe to assume that Michael J. Weithorn’s The Best You Can is the first time, on-screen or not, that Sedgwick has given her husband a prostate exam. The procedure comes early on in the duo’s new film, just far enough in – heh – for Sedgwick’s Cynthia Rand to have struck up a casual rapport with Bacon’s Stan Olszewski, the security guard who patrols her Brooklyn neighborhood on a nightly basis, but that doesn’t make the patient on the receiving end of his urologist’s gloved finger any more comfortable. He’s a sarcastic single dad whose daughter (Brittany O’Grady) regularly wants nothing to do with him, leaving plenty of time for midnight text sessions with the woman whose house was recently burglarized; his doorbell camera recommendation leads to an iMessage trove that rivals “Ulysses” in length. Cynthia, on the other hand, is a doctor in Manhattan whose husband, Walter (Judd Hirsch playing an excellent Judd Hirsch), is aging (and declining) rapidly, the memories of his accomplished days as a Nixon-era government official fading with time. Both Cynthia and Stan are in need of a friend, and the loneliest bloke on the block will do the trick. The questions surrounding their reasonably flirty-yet-platonic rendezvous aren’t all that complicated. What keeps things afloat for so long is the assumption that, at some point, these new pals are going to make out.
As is the nature of any modern R-rated comedy that appears to have been engineered in a lab with specifications that make it appropriate for movie nights hosted by progressive families, there’s plenty more to The Best You Can than questionable infidelity-infused intrigue, especially given the on-screen talent involved. A common theme in Tribeca’s slate of dramedies this year has been, to frame it broadly, found connection between people who need it most and expect it least, especially from where they discover it, and that’s what lies at the crux of Weithorn’s film. The larger-than-life man Cynthia married was 25 years her senior when they met, and she didn’t foresee this change in his mental fortitude. Inversely, Stan has always been fine on his own, free to have occasional sexual romps with the 20-something grocery store clerk who asks if he wants to “sext later” when he stops by her counter, buying a six-pack of Sierra Nevadas for the morning after his shift.
It’s the sort of picture that is light on plot and heavy on loose threads that perhaps should have been left on the cutting room floor, only making it into the final cut in order to provide each character’s individual arc with a bit of extra emotional heft. And if the goal here was to give every actor in its midst an excuse to have a moment, as it were, then by all accounts, The Best You Can is a triumph. Despite Warren’s condition, he strives to finish a book about how he spurred the Watergate investigation and exposed corrupt politicians before anyone else; the prose ends up evolving into a work of nonfiction that is more about his life as a whole than a textbook on Tricky Dick. Sammi (O’Grady) is an aspiring singer/songwriter, a dream her dad places pressure on as much as he supports it, adding nuance to the father-daughter relationship that is otherwise a loose end. Ultimately, though, the film is at its best when Bacon and Sedgwick are working off of one another, and though their dialogue is never not rote, the chemistry between the two is undeniable (duh) and they manage to elevate Weithorn’s basic humor to a kind of authenticity that dramedies tend to forego in favor of the easiest path forward. If anything, one can think of worse real-life Hollywood couples to give starring turns in a smartphone-era riff on You’ve Got Mail.
That The Best You Can is far too easy a film to invest in affectionately will diverge audiences, to be sure. There’s as much to be said for its brand of poignant manipulation as there is for its nauseatingly-sweet characters, and plenty will balk at being dropped into a movie full of all of the nicest people ever conjured on screen, only to watch them make one iffy decision after another, particularly when it pertains to Sedgwick and Bacon coming together as a will-they-won’t-they romantic pair. But the film’s heart is in the right place, and as far as being a statement work on complex humans doing “the best they can” to be exactly that – human – it’s sure to make good on its promise and then some. If you end up wishing that the film made more hay of its deepest themes (one’s health as they age; crises of creativity; hopes left in the dust to buttress someone else’s dreams), you’re almost sure to let it slide when it goes for the heartfelt jugular in its closing moments. We’re all just doing the best we can, after all. Remember that when your parents stumble upon this title once it inevitably lands on Hulu or Amazon Prime, and encourage them that there are far worse ways to spend 102 minutes of their time on this earth.
