Two siblings’ underlying resentment for one another is put to the test by a new love interest in My Blind Brother, a rom-com that often feels like it’s cutting with a blunt edge. In a clever bit of character building, the film opens with Robbie (Adam Scott) effortlessly running through the end of a marathon while his brother, an able-sighted Bill (Nick Kroll) sweats the last leg out trailing behind on Robbie’s guide rope. Here both the plot and joke remains purely on the surface; Bill’s life and accomplishments are performed in his blind brother’s shadow. Often, the unsatisfying aspect to Sophie Goodhart’s directorial debut is in its inability to mine its premise further.

The brothers become increasingly petty to one another over Robbie’s new girlfriend Francie (Jenny Slate), a woman in crisis after her ex-boyfriend gets blindsided by a bus. Slate and Kroll have worked together previously and share a dynamic chemistry on-screen as a romantic pair. Her presence elicits a warmer, more verbally unhinged side to his character—the only version of him in My Blind Brother with charisma. She also has moments of unexpected vulgarity spoken with her delightful, squeaky tone. This movie and everyone in it knows that Francie is dating the wrong brother; however, in the frustrating tradition of romantic comedies, the tension is left to linger everyone cowers away from confrontation.

Considering the level of comedic talent involved, one of the most surprising elements to My Blind Brother is its saccharine quality. Robbie is treated as an unrepentant dick throughout the movie, only to be given a tearful confession at the movie’s end. The character’s disability provides a few solid gags but is handled with a level of naturalism. Kroll, Scott and Slate are all charming presences in their roles—as is a totally magnetic and slightly underserved Zoe Kazan as Slate’s roommate—but knowing each of those actors’ penchants for hilarity, My Blind Brother feels lean on humor.

My Blind Brother is mostly amusing and its performances are strong, however, the tone remains unwavering until the film’s ending: lightly comedic, but unrelentingly self-serious. With so little actively happening in the plot the movie grows dull between stretches of more consistent humor. Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother is thinly plotted and familiar, but this mostly pleasant comedy has a winning romance at its center which elevates the film beyond standard fare.

Feeling oddly jealous—and embarrassed about that jealousy—when her sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Sophie Goodhart began developing a story about a tense sibling relationship largely built around resentment. That inspiration led to her 2003 short film My Blind Brother, which at the time seemed like a launching point for her smooth transition into feature filmmaking. “Since then I’ve had three or four films green-lit, ready to go, and then something happened,” Sophie laments from the Tribeca Film Festival. Her new feature-length directorial debut, also titled My Blind Brother, has been a long time coming, but the version Sophie finally got to make comes with a standout cast.

In her interview with Way Too Indie, My Blind Brother writer / director Sophie Goodhart discusses the long path to production for her debut, spending her option money too quickly, and the benefits of working with longtime friends like Nick Kroll, Adam Scott, and Jenny Slate.

I wanted to ask you about the film’s journey into development because this is a story that’s personal to you, but it’s also a movie that was based on a short film that you had directed.
Sophie Goodhart: Yeah, [the idea started with] my sister being diagnosed with M.S. [multiple sclerosis] when I was in my early twenties. I was sort of embarrassed and kind of surprised to find that I was feeling kind of jealous—and really embarrassed by my jealousy—about the fact that I knew that she was always going to be this incredible hero that battled against great misfortune. So that’s where the short came from.

I got incredibly lucky and worked with three great actors—Tony Hale, John Mattey and Marsha Dietlein—in the original. The short kind of got me agents, and got me certain contacts. Immediately I got these films optioned, and I was like, “Look at me, I’m about to really do it!” I had parties where I bought lots of people drinks where I celebrated my success. Unfortunately, I was, like, way, way, way too soon. I realized that was an expensive mistake to make.

Since then I’ve had three or four films greenlit, ready to go, and then something happened. 2008 happened, everyone needed their money and you couldn’t make films. Or one of the actors leaves and I can’t find a replacement or you couldn’t spend a certain budget on the film. I was writing something completely separate from [My Blind Brother], and was just focused on the Jenny Slate character—about a woman who was going out with this guy who gets killed by a bus just after she’s dumped him. She feels terrible, she kind of hates herself and finds herself on a weird path where she would have been a tragic victim and instead she was just a cruel ex-girlfriend. I realized that her story fit really, really well with this other story so I put them together in this feature. I had to wait around for the perfect cast, the perfect three people, who would mean that I could get over a million to shoot the movie.

There’s a way to interpret the logline of this movie as a broad, Mr. Magoo-style comedy, but your movie stays very tethered to reality. Was there an impulse to go broader or do you prefer to keep your writing grounded?
SG: I always write about things I’m feeling, or worrying about, or have experienced in one way or another. You know, I could research the whole world, or a new environment or a new job, but to have that kind of basic character issue that I’m not connected to I think would make it difficult. I think that the fact that it’s based on some of these feelings that I’ve had, meant that it could [depict] a mean-spirited aspect of humanity. Because it wasn’t just an outsider looking in and mocking it. It was something familiar that I felt and believed.

You had mentioned your three lead actors came aboard as a kind of package. How did you get Jenny Slate, Adam Scott, and Nick Kroll all become involved?
SG: It’s one of those things where you never know which people you meet in your life are going to be the ones to make things happen. It turned out that Sharon Jackson at William Morris Endeavor really connected to the movie, and she had confidence in it. She had enough power to make connections to these people. But I didn’t know that when I initiated talking to her. I wasn’t like, “This is the woman that’s gonna package it.”

The three people who kind of made it happen were my initial producer, Tori, who found the short film. That was reassuring and good news for people doing shorts is that [making them] actually can make a huge difference. Somebody can like it, and they can mention you to try and help you get a feature. Then, Sharon; it’s not often in big agent’s interests to put their time into small films—and this kind of a low budget indie film—but she took a fancy to it and sent it to these bigger actors. Finally, Tyler Davidson saw [our cast], read the script and was like, “Fine, I’m happy to give you a bit more money” than he originally would have been inclined to. It just takes so many happy accidents to get off the ground. And it took such a long time. I felt like I was ready for those happy accidents.

Sometimes it can feel fated in a way.
SG: Yeah, I think after 13 years sitting in my kitchen writing I was like, “oh my god.” It was only hardcore delusion and denial that has meant that I made this because any other human would have just thought, “fuck this, it’s not working.”

What was it like for Jenny Slate and Nick Kroll—who have worked together several times before—and to work with them on developing a romantic dynamic, especially one that is played pretty straight throughout?
SG: With Jenny and Nick and Adam, you just get this unbelievable mix of people who are so intelligent and so good at acting. So nimble about playing jokes and playing them so straight or so small, that they can do pretty much anything. When they read this script, they knew that it was this romantic element, and I didn’t want to play it jokingly. I think they totally delivered. I think the fact that they’re friends meant that I didn’t have to do as much work as I might’ve. And there’s such a beautiful ease between them that I could just say, “And kiss now,” and they just were comfortable, grown-up and intelligent. They were good at acting so it was easy.

What other movies and directors did you look to for influence when putting this movie together?
SG: Two directors that I love are James L. Brooks and Elaine May. I also looked to David O. Russell and Silver Linings Playbook. Then, Knife in the Water, even though tonally it’s so weird—I love the kind of graphic quality of [Polanski’s] work. Elaine May! Her original The Heartbreak Kid is just so fucking good. So those are my inspirations, obviously.

For a film loaded with many laughs, it’s strange that Joshy begins on quite the morbid note. Joshy (Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch) arrives home one day to find his fiancé (Alison Brie) lifeless on the floor, dead from an apparent suicide. But the film doesn’t dwell on her death for very long, instead jumping ahead four months when Joshy’s small crew of friends (Nick Kroll, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, and Brett Gelman) elect to celebrate his bachelor party, just as they had intended before the incident occurred. When the boys arrive at their secluded cabin for the party, they discover Joshy saying goodbye to a girl he picked up from the local bar—a rather uncharacteristic move and one that isn’t ever addressed again. Other than this small inexplicable moment, the rest of the film plays out as a hysterical weekend bender of heavy drinking, drug consumption, and partying with hookers. In theory it’s a classic recipe for a “what could possibly go wrong?” scenario, but, oddly enough, the answer in Joshy is nothing.

Credit the amazing cast for making Joshy work as well as it does. Without them, it’s just another hangout movie with a paper-thin plot and very little character development. Granted, simply putting these hilarious actors together in a room would make for entertainment. Each character’s personality puzzle-pieces into the group as a whole. Kroll is the partier. Pally is the sensitive married guy. Perry is the geek. Gelman is the wildcard. And then there’s Middleditch, who’s stuck playing the uninteresting title character—ironically, the least developed of the bunch. There’s also a random appearance by Joe Swanberg (and his real family), who seem only to show up to get a few laughs.

Luckily, there’s enough humor found in sophomore director Jeff Baena’s (Life After Beth) film that it’s easy to forgive some of the off moments. The highlight of Joshy is watching Perry finally getting his wish to play a complicated board game with the group. That’s right, this ensemble even finds a way to make the struggle to play a board game amusing to watch.

Rating:
7/10

Go through the massive list of stars that appear in Joe Swanberg’s Digging for Fire and it might be easy to claim that one of the most prolific names in modern indie has “gone mainstream.” But actually watch Digging for Fire (or Happy Christmas or Drinking Buddies), and it’s clear that the mainstream has actually come knocking on Swanberg’s door. This is the same low-key, character-based storytelling Swanberg has been honing for years, only now with a plethora of talent and established names thrown into the mix. And, if anything, Digging for Fire shows Swanberg as a filmmaker in total control, using his ensemble and skills at creating a casual, inviting tone to make a subtle and fascinating exploration of commitment, aging and marriage.

Taking place in Los Angeles, the film opens with married couple Lee (Rosemarie Dewitt) and Tim (Jake Johnson, who co-wrote with Swanberg) taking their son Jude (Swanberg’s own son, stealing every scene he’s in) to house-sit for one of Lee’s wealthy clients. While Lee goes off working as a yoga instructor, Tim—a public school teacher—stays at home during the summer break. Soon after arriving, Tim starts poking around the house and discovers a bone and an old gun buried in a yard behind the house. Tim wants to keep digging, but Lee doesn’t want him messing up her client’s property, and a host of other small disagreements between the two (including Tim’s refusal to put Jude in a private school) leads to Lee taking Jude to spend the weekend with her parents (Sam Elliott and Judith Light).

Tim takes the opportunity to invite some of his old buddies over (Sam Rockwell, Chris Messina, Mike Birbiglia and Kent Osborne, to name a few), and before long he’s convincing all of them to help dig up whatever else might be hiding underneath the property. At this point the film forks off into two narrative strands, one profiling Tim’s weekend with his friends, and the other following Lee trying to have a girl’s night out with her sister (Melanie Lynskey). Both Lee and Tim wind up finding themselves conflicted when they each encounter an opportunity to cheat; Lee meets a British restaurant owner (Orlando Bloom), and Tim makes nice with the young, carefree Max (Brie Larson).

Anyone familiar with Swanberg’s previous work won’t be surprised to learn the film’s central mystery is a nonstarter. It’s more of an excuse for getting characters together to casually chat about the themes Swanberg and Johnson really want to explore. “When did you feel like you got back to yourself?” Lee asks her mom at one point, wondering if marriage and motherhood have removed her ability to live her own life, and Tim admits to Max that he feels like he’s not maturing, he’s just getting older. Their brief exchanges with friends, family and strangers around them reveal that both Lee and Max have hesitations about staying in for the long haul of their marriage, with the hypothetical idea of something “better” existing out there tempting them into seeking individuality over partnership.

What makes Digging for Fire such an enjoyable yet fleeting experience is how Swanberg lets these ideas flow organically into the film through his terrific cast and tight editing. Narrative doesn’t mean much here, as it’s more about how Lee and Tim’s actions reflect their concerns. Dewitt and Johnson anchor the film nicely, and there isn’t a single weak spot in a cast that’s as sprawling as LA itself. Shooting on 35mm with cinematographer Ben Richardson (who also shot Drinking Buddies and, most famously, Beasts of the Southern Wild), the film’s keen eye for composition helps give it a cinematic feel that comes across as a surprise given its dialogue-heavy approach. Swanberg has made films for over a decade now, and at a pretty quick pace too (remember when he directed six films in 2011?), but in some ways Digging for Fire feels like the start of a newer, more refined era for him. It’s exciting to watch Swanberg in complete domination of his craft, but it’ll be more exciting to see what he does next.