Assisted Living review

Slacker, Meet The Greatest Generation

Slackers, the flannel-wearing, espresso-drinking hippie offspring who, from the early to mid Nineties, populated art house and multiplex screens alike; charming us with their witty verbiage and mastery of pop culture. They were a reaction against the previous decade of decadence – the anti Alex P. Keaton - equal parts cynic and idealist. But when the dot com era sprang up overnight, those angst-ridden romantics suddenly disappeared in a puff of clove cigarette smoke. Cries of “reality bites” were answered with “get a job.”

Well, it’s 2005 and everything old is new again. The slackers have re-emerged from their parents’ basements; and this time, they’re here to stay. But while the underachievers who populated the early films of Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith represented a generation on pause, this new breed of slackers have stopped altogether. The characters in Before Sunrise and Clerks were rooted in (and helped define) a genuine cultural phenomenon. These new cinematic slackers, exemplified by Zach Braff’s bogus Garden State, are carbon copies of their predecessors, sans cultural context. They’ve become stock cinematic stereotypes- like the Sexually Repressed Housewife or the Hooker With the Heart of Gold.

The latest member of Slacker 2.0 is Todd, the clueless nursing home janitor at the center of writer-director Elliot Greenebaum’s debut feature, Assisted Living. Todd’s the latest manifestation in an increasingly popular slacker subgroup: the Stoner-slacker, used to much better effect in the superior Shaun of the Dead and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. Todd is shown getting high several times, but after our first look at him, it seems redundant to see him actually toke up. His glassy, lifeless eyes (doll’s eyes, as Robert Shaw says in Jaws) and chubby, pale physique practically scream, “Dude, where’s my mop?” Actor Michael Bonsignore plays Todd in a perpetual cannabis-induced haze – Jeff Lebowski’s younger, less charming, milquetoast brother, if you will. Newcomer Bonsignore has an interesting face, and it would be nice to see him express an emotion other than doped. Unfortunately, Mr. Greenebaum’s script doesn’t grant him that opportunity.

Early on in the film, after establishing him as a lazy but relatively harmless goofball, Todd does something truly disturbing: He phones the mentally failing nursing home residents, pretending to be their dead loved ones calling from heaven. Like Peter Sarsgaard’s grave-robbing character in Garden State, another stoner-slacker stereotype, Todd’s behavior is so absurdly reprehensible, that the cards are stacked against him from jump. And also like Braff, Greenebaum uses the gesture not to reveal character, but as a set-up for a contrived plot device. Neither Greenebaum nor Braff impose moral judgment on their characters, but this doesn’t come across as a deliberate choice. They don’t judge them because they don’t know them. They don’t know them because they don’t exist as fully dimensional characters – just stereotypes without context. Ten years ago, slackerdom dramatized the uncertainty and disillusionment of a generation, now it’s often a lazy method to reflect a pervasive attitude among many young filmmakers: Fashionable apathy. This is why most of these films fail in the third act. We’re unconvinced of the “life lesson” learned by the protagonist, because we don’t feel the filmmakers believe it themselves. The moment of revelation is as mechanical a plot device as the car chase.

Besides the staff, the rest of Assisted Living is populated with senior citizens, many of who are actual members of the care facility where the film was shot. Greenebaum does a commendable job integrating the trained actors into this often documentary-like environment, but his camera’s eye never rises above naval-gazing verisimilitude. Like Robert Altman’s disappointing The Company, this film is told with digital fly-on-the-wall voyeurism, occasionally capturing honest moments, but missing the capital T Truth altogether. For a film set almost entirely in and around a nursing home, the complete absence of family visitors is initially surprising, until I realized the whole thing exists in a vacuum. Dogme 95, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier’s short-lived manifesto to filmic purity, may be the obvious visual inspiration here, but Greenebaum’s boxed-in, diorama-type storytelling more closely resembles the pulp thrillers of M. Night Shyamalan, only without the surprise ending. Even though the film was shot in Kentucky, besides the fleeting glimpse of a gospel program on the television and a resident Evangelical minister, this nursing home could have been in any state – Red, blue or purple. The result feels undeveloped, not archetypical.

By far the best thing about Assisted Living comes in the form of 80-year-old actress, Maggie Riley, who plays Mrs. Pearlman, a smart, feisty resident who takes on Todd as her surrogate son. (Her real son, who hasn’t called her in years, is apparently in Australia doing something with the coral reefs) Mrs. Pearlman is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. We know this because as soon as we meet her she says, “I’m in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.” Greenebaum’s telegraphing dialogue is a real shame, because Ms. Riley is clearly a gifted enough performer to convey her state of mind without having to spout these kinds of dunderheaded declarations. Like many other elements of this film, Mrs. Pearlman’s deteriorating condition is stated, but never explored.

On the film’s website, Greenebaum claims that Assisted Living has “More elderly actors than any film in history,” as if this in and of itself is an accomplishment. In fact, it’s a missed opportunity. It’s no secret that the elderly are virtually non-existent in American films, and when they do appear now and then, they’re either the subjects of cruel mockery or disingenuous saintliness. To his credit, Greenebaum succumbs to neither of these stereotypes. Unfortunately, with the exception of Ms. Riley, he doesn’t give them much to do, either. The poster for Assisted Living, Mr. Bonsignore and Ms. Riley sitting side-by-side, the young man sporting the old woman’s over-sized cataract sunglasses, suggests some kind of generational Odd Couple. Sadly, there’s just as little insight into The Greatest Generation as there is for Generation X. The head administrator, convincingly played by Clint Vaught, states early in the film, “These folks grew up without the Internet. Many of them lived through the Depression.” Whoa. Somebody stop the presses and call Tom Brokaw.

When a film doesn’t work for me, I can usually discern what the filmmaker’s intentions were, even if the elements don’t add up. Occasionally, and this was certainly the case with Assisted Living, the lights go up and I’m still in the dark. When this happens, especially considering all the blood, sweat and tears that go into independent films, I wish I could ask the filmmaker directly: “Why did you make this movie?” Fortunately for me, Mr. Greenebaum himself was there to answer questions after the screening. So I raised my hand and politely asked him, “Why did you make this movie?” His answer was something about Assisted Living starting out as a short film involving a nursing home janitor and his model plane, abruptly followed by “Next Question?” I had my answer: He wanted to make it longer.

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