It has good intentions and a name cast. But the tearjerking study in personal grief, “The Greatest,” just turns out to be grating. Ironically, the most annoying performance comes from its most accomplished cast member, Susan Sarandon. While its only truly redeeming element is the beautiful performance of a recently lauded newcomer, “An Education”‘s first-time Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan.
If you go
“The Greatest”
2 out of 5 stars
Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon, Carey Mulligan
Director: Shana Feste
Rated R for language, some sexual content and drug use
Running time: 98 minutes
Rookie director-writer Shana Feste hammers at a narrative that needed to be crafted with a much finer hand. When you are making a small-scale, dialogue-driven, family-loss drama, banality and emotional manipulation seem even more glaring. Here are recognizable people facing real-life conflict. Movies work best when their human essence is paramount. But they have to be captivating and authentic too. As the story opens, a family’s golden boy Bennett (Aaron Johnson from this week’s splashy “Kick-Ass”) dies suddenly in a car accident. By virtue of one of those flukes that only seem to occur in movies, the event takes place the same night he loses his virginity to his longtime secret high school crush, fellow graduating senior Rose (Carey Mulligan). And Rose, who is also acting that night on her previously secret love for him, just happens to get pregnant during this, her first sexual encounter.
Bennett’s devastated parents don’t know about the impending bundle of joy right away. But when bitter mother Grace (Sarandon) and her repressed math professor husband Allen (Pierce Brosnan) find out about Rose, they instantly take the stranger in and let her live with them during her pregnancy.
What is supposed to ensue, after the predictable sturm und drang, is a catharsis in which shared grief/love over Bennett bring his “peeps” together.
In actuality, it just rings false. Sarandon obsesses, weeps, and spews venom redundantly until her character magically heals. Meanwhile, the unavoidably smooth Brosnan — so perfect for his role as a slimy politician in “Ghost Writer” last month — isn’t credible portraying an awkward numbers geek (or any similarly offbeat character). But he does share a few effective scenes with the movie’s one saving grace.
Mulligan is grace on screen. Her unaffected but compelling presence elevates “The Greatest.” Taken with her magnificent debut last year, she proves she has the elusive “it” quality to be an enduring leading lady.
If only today’s weak rip-off of 1980s classic “Ordinary People” had been as extraordinary as her.
