The Savages

Written and Directed
by Tamara Jenkins

Dark comedy is a very tricky thing, especially if it isn't done as a live-action cartoon. This isn't that by any means, and the best part is that it works. This is one of the funniest films about dying of old age that's been made in years and years.

Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco) is living with his longtime girlfriend Doris in the famous Sun City retirement community, when an altercation with her caregiver leads to problems. Thus, after years of estrangement, their father returns into the lives of his grown children Wendy(Laura Linney) and Jon(Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hilarity ensues. No, seriously.

Wendy is a playwright living in the East Village section of Manhattan, who uses her time temping to send out grant applications. She's having an affair with her landlord(Peter Friedman) . Jon is a professor at SUNY Buffalo, where he teaches a course of Bertolt Brecht, is writing a book on the subject, and breaking up with his girlfriend(Cara Seymour), who's visa is about to expire. But Doris' death leads to an eviction and Jon and Wendy have their lives upended. This is about what happens when the parent becomes the child and vice versa. It's something that pretty much everyone over a certain age can identify with.

The acting, as one might expect with a cast this prestigious, is excellent, and Hoffmann and Linney have great chemistry together. But it is Bosco, who's done almost exclusvily live theater in the past, who steals the movie, he's both brilliant and pathetic as the old man who's losing both his marbles and his life. The supporting cast is also fine, with Friedman giving a nuanced and funny performance, and Gbenga Akinnagbe shines in a small part as a caregiver at the nursing home where John and Wendy have put their father. But it's the sharp writing by Jenkins, who hasn't done anything of note since “The Slums of Beverly Hills”, which turns this from a mere movie-of-the-week to something so much more.

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