On the Rocks explores father daughter relationships, unfortunately it does so in the blandest way imaginable.
Synopsis
Rashida Jones plays Laura, a 30 something mother living in New York who suspects her husband Dean is cheating on her. Laura’s father Felix, played by Bill Murray, encourages Laura to track her husband’s movements to uncover the truth. As Laura and Felix trail Dean issues within their own relationship are brought to the surface.
An Unmemorable Movie
This is what I like to call a non-movie. Nothing really happens. The themes are not explored in any interesting ways. None of the characters are particularly special or memorable. The acting isn’t awful but it isn’t great either. I doubt anyone will remember this movie in t-minus 2 months. I watched it today and am already forgetting parts of it. There are aspects of this movie’s plot that are weirdly similar to the Nasim Pedrad vehicle, Desperados which came out earlier this year and was equally unmemorable.
Rashida Jones’ performance is serviceable she is mean to be the straight man to Bill Murray’s more eccentric character. Jones has the ability to play a great straight man, just watch her in Parks and Recreation, but she can’t do much to help Murray’s comatose performance. Bill Murray’s character is supposed to be a charming playboy but it feels like he’s half asleep for most of this movie.
Low Energy Vibe
The entire movie has a sleepy quality to it. I don’t know if these characters are meant to be severely sleep deprived but they’re certainly acting like it. Even the dramatic climax of the movie where Rashida Jones finally confronts her father about his philandering the actors seem so low energy that the scene loses all significance. Maybe Sofia Coppola was trying to go for a more realistic subdued form of confrontation but if she was going for realism I don’t think she should have had her main character fly to Mexico on a whim to try and catch her husband cheating.
Coppola wrote and directed this movie. The plot would have been a better fit for a broad studio comedy. A father and daughter duo having wacky adventures across New York trying to track down the daughter’s cheating dirt bag husband. Instead Coppola took that pretty silly plot and filmed it like a high brow art house film and it just doesn’t work.
Underwritten
This movie’s screenplay is very underwhelming considering how good Sofia Coppola screenplays usually are. Murray’s character is just a misogynist who keeps spouting off these pseudoscientific theories about the relationship between men and women. I thought his character was particularly one dimensional and didn’t have any real development. There is a scene towards the end between Rashida Jones and her husband, who is played by Marlon Wayne’s for some reason, and it is one of the worst written scenes I’ve seen in a while. It fits in so many cringe worthy cliché in such a small amount of time it’s honestly almost impressive.
Positives and Final Score
On a more positive note, Sofia Coppola is a good director so this movie is well made. It’s shot nicely; there are a few Sofia Coppola signature flourishes that we’ll talk about later. Jones and Murray have good chemistry and there are a few scenes where we get some interesting insights into their relationship, I wish there was more of that. There is a car chase scene that is surprisingly effective. Jenny Slate makes a short cameo and she’s probably the funniest part of the movie.
Is this movie aggressively bad, no, but it is unmemorable and boring and some might say that that’s even worse. There are glimpses of an ok movie in there but they are few and far between. I would give On the Rocks a 2.5 out 5 stars.
The Lost In Translation Comparison
After watching On the Rocks I decided to watch Lost in Translation. I’d never seen it before but it was also written and directed by Sofia Coppola and starred Bill Murray alongside a much younger actress in the case of Lost in Translation, Scarlet Johansson. Lost in Translation has so much more energy than On the Rocks. Lost in Translation depicts Tokyo as this bustling metropolis that can make an outsider feel anxious and isolated but captivated as well. In stark contrast to the New York shown in On the Rocks which is nearly empty and completely devoid of any energy.
Aside from Coppola, Bill Murray is the other thing these films have in common. In Lost in Translation, Murray seems much spryer even though his character is going through an emotional crisis. He also seems much more engaged with the material. In his defense, that was 17 years ago and he’s 70 now so his ability might be diminished just a bit.
Daddy Issues
In both films Bill Murray’s plays characters who are fathers that are unfaithful to their wives and have strained relationships with their children. These characters are not meant to be exact analogs for Francis Ford Coppola but there are definitely some clear seminaries. Sofia Coppola is definitely trying to work through some personal issues with these films and I wish her the best with all that.
The Sofia Coppola Signature Shot
The family therapy aspect aside in both films Sofia Coppola shows off her uncanny ability to create memorable still frames within movies. There are several scenes in Lost in Translation where Murray and Johansson are sitting together somewhere and the camera just watches them motionless for a while. Coppola uses this same technique several times in On the Rocks it’s very effective at illustrating the relationship between two characters either highlighting intimacy or distance. I think this is one of her most recognizable aspects of her directing style.
Embrace the Awkward
As a writer Coppola embraces and invites awkwardness into her dialogue. In real life not every interaction is smooth and clean, not everyone can spit out into Aaron Sorkin quips at a moment’s notice. In On the Rocks Rashida Jones’ character has to abruptly end conversations all the time. She has to do this weird dance of stumbling to say goodbye in the middle of someone else’s thought. This realistic awkwardness of everyday conversation was one of the positives of the On the Rocks script which was otherwise pretty uninteresting.
Conclusions
In comparing the two films it became pretty obvious that Coppola just didn’t have a very strong vision for what On the Rocks should be. Even if they are not all universally beloved her other films like Marie Antoinette, The Virgin Suicides, even The Bling Ring all have a very clear artistic vision. With On the Rocks it felt like she wanted to make a movie about fathers and daughters but mixed it with a story about marriage and creative block and it all felt a little bit muddied.
My final thought is that unless you’re really dying to see On the Rocks, I’d just go watch or rewatch Lost in Translation, it covers a bit of the same territory and is a far superior movie.
