Whether college-aged kids or middle-aged adults, new discoveries can happen anytime. This sentiment is drawn out in an afternoon’s worth of small scale adventures in the whimsical enough At Middleton. While the film intends to act as a quirky, fun, heart warming flick for older audiences, there is ultimately not enough bite taken out of life on display here that is worth applauding over.
While the film’s setup, that of two spouses taking their own children on a college campus tour “at Middleton,” only to their finding attractions in the other’s perfectly charming and compatible opposites, and stowing away for an episodic series of quirky adventures, seems innocently entertaining, there are real problems with the mechanics of the storytelling. While a devout champion for independent filmmaking, I fear that I secretly desire watching the same movie with a bit more money pumped into it. Meaning to say, there are some real problems here that more developed stakes (joyriding two perfectly unattended bicycles around the campus isn’t all too thrilling) could really help.
Though with its totally loose and freely shooting nature, first-time feature film director Adam Rodgers is able to capture fun and freed performances from its star actors. Veteran film actor Andy Garcia, as do-gooder George Hartman (a bow-tie wearing heart surgeon), though tied to a one-note simpleton of a character, uses his grounded and deadpan seriousness to good comic and likable effect, while further entertaining with moments of Buster Keaton-esque physical comedy, a new turn for the Academy Award Nominee. Vera Farmiga plays Edith Martin, a free spirit who coaxes the buttoned up George out of his shell while solidly serving as the film’s instigator. The two then take in the day “at Middleton,” getting into lighthearted mischief like sneaking into buildings and running from campus police.
It would be unfair to nitpick at a movie like this, whose aspirations are to entertain with broad strokes and general funny circumstances for easy watching audiences, and it should be commended for its achievement as a fine, feel good adult comedy made on a shoe-string budget.
At Middleton is the kind of movie reserved for middle-aged adults in need of a few easy laughs (clueless tour leader Justin “Dingleberry” (Nicholas Braun)’s name serves as a consistent Seinfeld-ian “Newman” joke) and telegraphed romantic prospects. In the opening scene, we see that George’s son Conrad (Spencer Lofranco) is on the fence about the esteemed school while Edith’s ever more precocious daughter Audrey (Taissa Farmiga, Vera’s real-life younger sister), is blisteringly excited about her soon attending. While a story like this could focus on these kids and their new-to-life point of views, they are quite literally, ditched, as the movie trades in the children’s follies to center on the story of their parents: two “perfectly happy,” yet unhappily married people, who use the day to act on their impulses of risk taking and, deeper yet, finding a sense of completion, true love, with the other.
It would be unfair to nitpick at a movie like this, whose aspirations are to entertain with broad strokes and general funny circumstances for easy watching audiences, and it should be commended for its achievement as a fine, feel good adult comedy made on a shoe-string budget. But there are still problems in its story, which hold it back from achieving anything more. Why do the adults abandon the children, if not to learn anything poignant and significant that they can, at the end of the day, come back to teach to their kids, who they left on the family outing? In fact, there is no real happy ending here. When the tired likes of George and Edith, getting back into their cars at the end of a full day’s worth of kindling a newfound love with one another, through various wacky shenanigans (including, unnecessarily, the enjoyment of a bong with undergrads near the end of the film, and perhaps even past the film’s proper climax), they must acknowledge their own sense of dissatisfactions as they return to their unfulfilled lives. Somehow, audiences might not resonate with their disappointment that the day is finally over.
