'Welcome to the Rileys' slow but heartfelt
This might well be the closest thing we get to an actual Christmas movie this holiday season.
Jake Scott's family crisis drama “Welcome to the Rileys” boasts superlative, nuanced performances from its three main actors and a seasonally appropriate story of charity and good will toward all.
But it moves so slowly and deliberately that it fails to sweep us along with the damaged characters as they meander off to New Orleans for some healing and a greater understanding of themselves.
James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo star as the Rileys, Doug and Lois. They live in Indiana. Their teen daughter has been dead for eight years after a tragic auto accident.
Their marriage has been dead for a long time, too.
Lois has frozen herself in time. She probably has the same hair style she did when her daughter died. She clearly hasn't left her home since then. (One telling scene shows Lois trying to use a key to open a car trunk that has no key hole suggesting she hasn't driven a car since remote controls came along.)
Doug has become withdrawn and distant, and often goes into the garage to openly cry out his grief.
We soon realize that he has also been seeing a local waitress for companionship and other benefits.
Doug's plumbing supply business takes him to a convention in New Orleans where he goes into a strip club and meets a young, aggressive hustler named Mallory (“Twilight” star Kristen Stewart).
As Doug looks longingly at a wallet photo of his daughter who resembles Mallory it's no great leap to see why he wants to befriend her. To take care of her. To protect her.
Doug's impulsive decision to sell his share of the business and stay in New Orleans sets in motion a crazy midlife crisis. Or could it be something else?
Whatever his motivation, Doug develops a platonic relationship with Mallory, then moves in with the foul-mouthed girl. He fixes up her rathole rental unit and becomes her mentor. She's not the most educated girl on the strip club staff.
Meanwhile, back in Indiana, lonely Lois finally musters the will to get in the aforementioned car and drive down to New Orleans to find her missing husband.
Oh, oh!So many elements could have gone wrong with this story had Ken Hixon's screenplay succumbed to the obvious and loaded up the plot with expected conflicts and cliched results.
#8220;Welcome to the Rileys#8221; adroitly dodges them, and also supplies a cautiously hopeful ending that doesn't drip with sentiment and goo.
There's a lot to appreciate in #8220;Welcome to the Rileys.#8221; Leo and Gandolfini render superbly detailed characters whose emotions sit easily on their faces, eager to be read and understood.
Their best scenes are ones in which they are alone on the screen, opening their hearts to us: Gandolfini's private expression of loss; and Leo's thrilling sense of wonderment at the outside world she has missed for so long.
Stewart's performance is the kicker here. As the underage stripper who won't admit she's a prostitute, Stewart creates a lonely, abandoned girl trapped in thongs and plastic-tape pasties, and hardened by a lifetime of misuse, abuse and neglect.
None of Stewart's whiny ticks and morose posturing trademarks of her character in the #8220;Twilight#8221; movies surfaces here, at least not until the closing segments.
Scott, son of Ridley #8220;Alien#8221; Scott and nephew of Tony #8220;Top Gun#8221; Scott, directs #8220;Welcome to the Rileys#8221; with such deliberated seriousness that it's tough for us to root for these characters' small triumphs.
And, maybe some day, someone will make a movie that flips the geographical cliché so that a good-hearted soul from the big city helps a lost sinner in the Midwest.
<p><b>“Welcome to the Rileys”</b></p>
<p>Rating: ★ ★ ½</p>
<p>Starring: James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, Kristen Stewart</p>
<p>Directed by: Jake Scott</p>
<p>Other: A Samuel Goldwyn Films release</p>
<p>Where: Only at the Pipers Alley Theaters in Chicago.</p>
<p>Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, sexual situations. 110 minutes</p>