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| You Can Count on Me |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 109 |
| Public Rating: 10.00 (4 votes) |
Director: Kenneth Lonergan |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama |
Year: 2000 |
| Writer(s): Kenneth Lonergan |
| Distributor: 1 |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney play a brother and sister in this love story of sorts. It is about familial love, and how much you can push it before it disappears. Ever since their parents were killed when they were very young, Linney has played mother while Ruffalo has messed around and gotten into trouble. He turns up out of the blue, and we get the impression that this has happened many times. He's between jobs, as he often is, and he wants to stay with her and her son for a while. The son, played by Kieran Culkin (how many of those Culkins are there anyway?) initially doesn't trust Ruffalo, basically because he's a loser with a heart of gold.
Meanwhile, Linney is having trouble at work with her new, super-efficient boss, played by Matthew Broderick. He's a real jerk, and he makes a once smoothly-running office difficult with his strict rules and comments. The two of them dislike each other immediately, which is why she (and the audience) can't understand why she agrees to have an affair with him, despite the fact that he's a married jerk. The funniest line in the movie was wasted in the preview, when they are lying in a hotel bed after making love and she says, "This is wonderful." He replies in a sigh, "I know," and she laughs and says that wasn't what she meant.
She is conflicted because she wants to find someone who will be a good father to her son. There is a guy, the original Nice Guy Bob played by John Tenny, who loves her and Culkin and has offered to marry her. But he's boring, so she can't make up her mind. She doesn't love him, which is as good a reason as any not to marry him.
Ruffalo and Culkin strike up an uneasy friendship. Ruffalo takes the boy to a bar where they beat everyone at pool; when Linney finds out from an outside source and berates him, Ruffalo childishly yells at the boy. In a lot of ways, the two are on equal footing. Ruffalo plays his part as a sullen teenager who doesn't like the fact that he's had to grow up.
There were things I didn't like about this film. At times it seemed very stagy and uninspired. One scene in particular, when Ruffalo and Linney are in a restaurant and Linney finds out that her brother had been in jail, was one of those where I felt so embarrassed for the characters that I had a hard time watching it. The music was mostly annoying, alternating between bad country music (these guys are supposed to be in New England, fer chrissakes) and a string quartet piece that was used often and poorly, as if Longergan could only afford one piece and he was determined to use it whenever possible. I also had a hard time with Ruffalo, who was doing his best young Marlon Brando, so obviously that I kept expecting him to yell "Stella!!" or respond "What do you got?" when asked what he was rebelling against. Despite these things, there was an emotional reality that I admired. The relationship between Linney and Ruffalo was honest and multi-dimensional, and the friendship that developed between Ruffalo and Culkin was inspiring.
Linney was nominated for Best Actress, and Lonergan was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. The movie was on just about everybody's Top Ten list; while I really liked it, there were enough problems and enough better movies to keep it off mine. Call it Top 20.
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