Hoffman's Netflix masterclass: The Meyerowitz Stories is an intense but funny movie you can watch at home

By Brian Viner For The Daily Mail

Published: 21:01 EDT, 12 October 2017 | Updated: 13:22 EDT, 13 October 2017

The Meyerowitz Stories (15)

Rating:

Our Souls At Night (PG) 

Rating:

This week’s best two new releases are films available to watch in your home, as long as you have the online streaming service Netflix. One is The Meyerowitz Stories, written and directed by Noah Bambauch and with a stellar cast including Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson, Candice Bergen, Rebecca Miller and Adam Driver. With original music by Randy Newman, just to add some gold to the tin lid.

It is about a large, dysfunctional family, its narrative driven by quickfire, neurotic, New York Jewish wit. The film is divided into titled chapters, most of them notionally concentrating on a different character, beginning with talkative, tightly-wound Danny (Sandler) Meyerowitz, a full-time house-husband who is about to wave his daughter off to college.

The Meyerowitz Stories, written and directed by Noah Bambauch, features a stellar cast including Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson, Candice Bergen, Rebecca Miller and Adam Driver

The Meyerowitz Stories, written and directed by Noah Bambauch, features a stellar cast including Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson, Candice Bergen, Rebecca Miller and Adam Driver

Just as she is spreading her wings, his are being clipped; he is moving back in with his dad, Harold (Hoffman), a sculptor who has never had the critical accolades he thinks he deserves; Hoffman is marvellous at conveying the existential hurt of an elderly artist who feels unfairly overlooked and whose grumpiness cannot conceal his enduring need for approval. He gets precious little sympathy from his alcohol-sodden wife (Thompson).

Danny has a sister, Joan (Elizabeth Marvel), but their father has never made any secret of his preference for their half-brother, Matthew (Stiller), a showbiz accountant in LA. Old Harold’s flaws as a parent come into even sharper focus when he is hospitalised and seems about to die.

This sounds intense, and it is, but it is also very funny. Baumbach is terrifically adept at marrying searing poignancy with sharp comedy, and his script shows glorious flashes of mischief, as when Thompson’s character observes approvingly of a young man that “he’s baby-faced but sinewy, like an old lover of mine, Willem Dafoe”.

Throughout, the director is wonderfully served by his actors. In straighter dramatic roles than usual, Stiller and especially the oft-maligned Sandler are superb. And watching Hoffman, 50 years after his film debut in The Graduate, still feels like a masterclass.

It's also half a century since Robert Redford and Jane Fonda played frisky newlyweds in Barefoot In The Park

It's also half a century since Robert Redford and Jane Fonda played frisky newlyweds in Barefoot In The Park

It's also half a century since Robert Redford and Jane Fonda played frisky newlyweds in Barefoot In The Park. In another Netflix film well worth seeing, Our Souls At Night, the two mighty old troupers are both superb playing elderly neighbours, Louis and Addie.

They’re both widowed and scarcely know each other, but tentatively begin a relationship after she invites him, out of the blue, to sleep with her occasionally. Not for sex, just companionship.

It’s a film about old age, small-town life and regrets, and for all its schmaltz and sentimentality, it’s absolutely lovely.

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