A good movie? No, but it is the perfect movie to watch at home on a Sunday when you’ve got nothing much going on. It’s cozy, unchallenging, a little boring, a missed opportunity to explore the ambitions of older people, but also effortlessly appealing, and that’s mostly thanks to Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton as a long married couple thinking about selling their walk-up apartment in NYC’s surreally competitive real estate market.
What Works: Diane Keaton is all frivolous buoyancy to Freeman’s soulful gravitas, but their chemistry is better than you might think. She brings out a lighter, romantic side that’s not often showcased, and it’s nice to see not just the rare positive portrayal of an interracial couple but also a senior citizen interracial couple.
And the film wisely makes Freeman more the center focus, as he single-handedly infuses this movie with a soul. It’s been said that he could read the phone book and make it interesting, well, this might be the closest he ever comes to testing that hypothesis since there’s a stretch in the last half of this movie where the main characters are really just talking real estate prices and there’s more numbers than actual words. Still, he makes it feel like an old man’s decision to move is the most important thing in the world…for about 90 minutes.
What Doesn’t: This is a very light film and it largely ducks out on really exploring what it means to get older and the potentially great theme of “Is my house now uncomfortable?” And “what does it mean to age out of your lifestyle?” That’s a great idea for a movie, but this one is more interested in meandering subplots about a terrorist on TV, expensive treatments for an ailing dog, and Cynthia Nixon’s overused real estate broker.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Freeman’s artist is being told his work has no value “in today’s marketplace” at the same time his very home is competing in this brutal real estate market, and a better film might have more directly connected all these issues to ask real questions about the anxieties of getting older and aging out of the life you want.