Wow, I'm so impressed. I don't think I've written a review in a couple of years but this movie actually inspired me to write one.
This movie is a dramedy, but there are definitely enough small funny/quirky and laugh out loud moments to keep it from being too heavy, while at the same time handling some difficult topics very well and with sensitivity. There is grief, there is mental illness, there is marital strife. There is overwhelming love, forgiveness, healing, humor, weirdness, compassion, determination. And one freaking crazy bird.
I forget that Melissa McCarthy really can act. After too many Thunder Force, Ghostbusters, and Life of the Party type shows, she seems to be constantly swallowed up in over-the-top loud crude brash characters. Now she plays someone who is hurting, who is trying, who is still a little too much for the situation sometimes but is good and kind and loving and working through a rough situation. She is funny. She is quirky. I love her character and she acts it so well! She hits the highs and the lows dead on, she brings the pathos and the sorrow and then lightens the moment just when it's needed with just a little bit of weirdness. But also she isn't perfect. She explodes in anger, she responds wrong sometimes, and while you want to ask why she's acting that way, it's also real, who of us acts perfectly all the time, who of us doesn't sometimes take our frustration out on the wrong people, especially when under great emotional strain?
Chris O'Dowd is sensitive, he is lost, and he does it beautifully. It takes him a long time to come out of the fog but you love him in his pain and as he realizes where he has to draw the line between his pain and the pain he causes. It is a role I'm not used to seeing from the bumbly sometimes crude (but funny) Irish actor and he absolutely nails it. The tiny little eyebrow quirks, the tiny little mouth angles, he really nails it. There is basically no humor from him and yet he plays his role so well it doesn't matter, he is right for the part where it is.
Kevin Kline - I forgot this actor even existed and then bam, a delightful role and he plays it so well. He takes Melissa's hits of pain and serves her a helping of pragmatic recovery that at the same time does him good. What a great role for a great actor.
There are a variety of other delightful side characters with bit parts. Some that are only on once and some that come back a few times. Each with funny little conversations - so weird and yet so real to life but hilariously bizarre.
This is the kind of movie that wouldn't exist without streaming companies. Prior to streaming services making movies it would maybe, if lucky, have become a made for tv movie and would have been seen by a few. But it's the kind of movie that should be made more often. I wish I had these kind of shows to watch all the time.
For those who want to know - some heavy subjects - death, depression, suicide, marital strife. No sex but crude humor a couple of times. A few lessor swear words and one F-bomb. For these two main actors and for by PG-13 standards it's quite clean relatively speaking. Is it PG-rated clean, well no, not quite there.
