With an of-the-moment cast and a story dealing with familiar, earnest emotions, About Alex, written and directed by Jesse Zwick in his feature film debut, is sure to satisfy its target urban, young audience. Some of its themes, however, are introduced with a lack of subtlety that brings the film to several halting stops.
The movie, which premiered April 17 at the Tribeca Film Festival, lays bear the complexities of post-collegiate life, when friends have fanned out across the country to deal with new circumstances and deep-seated anxieties without the support structure they had grown to rely on. The challenges are proving to be too much for Alex (Jason Ritter), whose suicide attempt as the film opens brings the gang back together for a weekend at an upstate cabin. As the six old college friends — and a controversial plus-one — gather to support one another, flames are reignited, personalities clash, and bonds are stretched to the limit.
The ensemble cast is uneven, with some players falling short of their potential, but the story compensates with its eminently familiarity to anyone who has tried to recapture the “glory days” that can never be reproduced. Max Greenfield as Josh and Nate Parker as Ben steal the show with the sincere, struggling men they bring to life.
Josh is an insufferable academic, bent on confronting uncomfortable feelings and awkward situations head-on. His blunt approach forces the other characters to deal with raw emotions and keeps everyone on edge for the entire weekend.
(Greenfield, with thick glasses and a scruffy beard, bears a physical resemblance in this film to Jeff Goldblum, who is name-checked in the movie — and who, coincidentally, attended the same screening I did.)
It is through Josh that Zwick delivers some heavy-handed philosophizing on the nature of relationships, depression, and the difficulties of growing into full-fledged men and women. The themes are tackled just a bit too opaquely, turning a couple of days at a cabin into occasional graduate-level seminar discussions that disrupt the flow of the film.
The plot carries on, though, and throws in a few twists to give Parker the meat he needs to make Ben the most interesting character in the movie. Ben is a promising young writer — or he was, before a yearlong bout of writer’s block that has opened his Pandora’s box of anxieties about his skills and his ability to maintain relationships both with his friend, Alex, and his girlfriend, Siri (Maggie Grace).
Siri, meanwhile, has landed a dream fellowship in Los Angeles. However, the love of her life, Ben, is convinced he must stay in New York for his career. Their relationship is strained, a fact that is evident to everyone at the cabin, adding to the uncomfortable feelings all around. Things only get more complicated as heightened emotions are stretched to the breaking point.
Aubrey Plaza plays the frenetic Sarah, a quirky, sweet girl with a compulsion for romantic entanglements. Either Plaza struggles to distinguish herself from her character on Parks and Recreation or she was cast in the role because of the similarities. Either way, I never quite saw Plaza merge into the character as opposed to portraying her.
The sixth member of the group, Isaac (Max Minghella), has strayed farthest from his college days, becoming an Italian-shoe-wearing, hedge-fund-trading, potential Republican (!) in San Francisco. Other than some minor sexual tension with Sarah, Isaac’s only addition to the film was to bring his young girlfriend, Kate (Jane Levy), on the trip.
Kate works for a suicide prevention hotline, adding a professional voice to the attempted suicide that looms over the entire get-together. Levy makes the most of the role she is given, creating a cute, self-conscious, wise-beyond-her-years wild card among the six friends who have grown accustomed to their own predictable interactions.
As the weekend unfolds, it becomes clear that any of the core six could have been the one slitting his or her wrists in the bathtub at the outset of the film. Each is struggling to cope with the overwhelming pressure of immediate professional and personal fulfillment that so often feels like a requirement of one’s mid-20s. That feeling will be familiar to much of the target audience, and with the star power of Grace, Greenfield, Plaza, and Ritter among that particular cohort, the movie will become a piece of the nostalgia so fiercely despised by Greenfield’s Josh when that demographic looks back 10 years from now.
The larger audience will find a film full of challenging questions and charming humor. Zwick proves himself adept at ratcheting up tension and breaking it with well-constructed absurdity and sarcasm. If his future efforts can more deftly weave his heavy themes into the fabric of his films, he will succeed in producing interesting and challenging works.
In this first effort, Zwick has created a fine film and a worthy entry in the Tribeca Film Festival. About Alex is funny, thought-provoking, and entertaining — but not without its flaws.