“If life isn’t kicking your a–, it’s not doing it’s job.”
So says Andy Goodrich, trying his best to put an upbeat spin on the fact that life is indeed doing a job on his life.
It started with a phone call when the well-heeled art gallery owner wasn’t even out of bed yet—a call from his wife. Instead of lying there next to him, Naomi calls to tell him she’s checked into a rehab program for 90 days.
Rehab? Andy asks.
Yes. Rehab, Naomi tells her husband. She needs help to find herself again after losing that aforementioned self in a prescription painkiller haze.
Andy is stunned, further evidence to Naomi that she’s made the right choice. “You wouldn’t know,” she says bitterly to her workaholic husband, the one who leaves early and comes home late and leaves every detail of raising their twin 9-year-old kids (Billy and Mose) to Naomi. “I’ve been carrying an enormous weight, and I can’t take it anymore.”
Oh, and one more thing, Naomi adds at the end of their little talk: “I’m leaving you.”
But, she says cheerily, “Take care of the kids, Andy. You’ll do great.”
Naomi’s sudden departure from their marriage is bad enough. But life is just getting started doing a number on Andy as every aspect of his carefully curated life begins to crumble.
Andy Goodrich isn’t a bad guy. Far from it, actually. In fact, he’s the kind of man whom I suspect many fathers and husbands can probably relate to pretty quickly. He works hard—too hard, as it turns out, neglecting his home life. But even in that, he feels compelled to provide for his family. Well, materially, at least.
When it comes to emotional intelligence in his closest family relationships, though, Andy’s pretty much out to lunch. Everyone—including Andy’s children—seemed to know that Naomi wasn’t doing well. That she took pills morning and night just to cope. But Andy was never there to see her decline, to notice that she was at the end of her rope. And now, Naomi’s reached her limit.
This “mid-life crisis” as Andy describes it (never mind that his grown daughter, Grace, from a first failed marriage says that means he’ll live to be 120 years old) is a rude wakeup call for him. It forces Andy to see how much his kids need him and how much he’s relationally failed his family, even if he’s succeeded in providing a lavish lifestyle for them.
As such, Goodrich chronicles Andy’s awakening as a parent. With coaching from young Billy, who seems like a 45-year-old mother trapped in a 9-year-old’s body—Andy slowly begins to learn all the routines that Naomi could do in her sleep: the kind of sandwiches Billy and Mose want in their lunches, what time to pick them up from school, putting a glass of water on the nightstand next to Billy’s bed.
Andy’s not exactly a quick study, but gradually, we see his priorities begin to change as it painfully dawns on him that he’s missed so much because of his utter devotion to his work.
That’s true in his relationship with Grace, too. His older daughter is 36 and almost ready to give birth. She longs to be closer to her dad, even as she sometimes lets him have it with both proverbial barrels. At one point, Andy promises to take Grace to a doctor’s appointment because she can no longer comfortably drive. When he’s late, Grace loses it with him. Even as he’s trying to apologize, Grace tells him, “You don’t get it, do you? I waited for you for a ride.”
“I’m sorry I let you down,” Andy stammers.
“You let me down my whole life!” Grace unloads—about 30 seconds before her water breaks in a parking lot, which gives Andy yet another shot at “being there.”
If Andy has largely failed to show up at home, the same really can’t be said of his five employees at the gallery. If anything, he seems to care for them more easily and naturally than he cares for his own flesh and blood. And as the gallery slowly fails due to a shortage of sales, it breaks Andy’s heart to consider closing it and having to tell them that he can no longer provide a job for them.
Andy also strikes up a friendship with a man named Terry at his kids’ school as they find themselves unexpectedly swapping “breakup” stories after dropping them off one day. Terry, who’s gay, was abandoned by his partner. Three years later, he’s still an emotional wreck. Andy tries to offer sympathy, but he ends up blurting out his own story of brokenness. The pair become friends, albeit with an awkward encounter interspersed that I’ll detail below.
Andy doesn’t much care for daughter Grace’s husband, Pete, for much of the movie. But in the end, he can see that she chose Pete because he’s an attentive, compassionate and other-centered man. Grace also suggests that Andy doesn’t like Pete precisely because those character qualities are largely absent in Andy.
Andy goes to a very New Age-y meeting focused on meditative breathing. The scene is largely played for humor, as Andy really isn’t the meditative breathing type. An intense, overly dramatic man wearing a robe and sporting an Eastern guru-like vibe coaches Andy humorously through the process.
At the closing of his gallery, Andy says “the Buddhists say there are three things that matter”: how you loved, how gently you lived and how gracefully you let go of the things that weren’t really meant for you. Andy admits that he’s never been one to relinquish much and that gentleness has never really been his strong suit. But he hopes those around him know that he loves them, even as he’s realized that’s not always been true of his life, either.
We hear a passing reference to someone’s prayers.
Andy attends a concert with a female singer who performs a very erotic song with lyrics about sex and masturbation.
As mentioned above, Terry is gay and still devastated by the departure of his partner three years before, leaving him to parent his son, Alexander (who has epilepsy).
Andy and Terry become good friends. At one awkward moment, Terry misconstrues Andy’s hospitality (Andy offers him whiskey and puts some jazz music on when Terry comes over to pick up Alexander from a playdate with Billy and Mose) as a romantic overture, and spontaneously kisses Andy. Andy is quite surprised and handles it pretty well, but Terry quickly realizes that Andy’s kindness was not meant as an invitation at all. Terry is horribly embarrassed and berates himself for his foolishness, but it ultimately doesn’t affect their friendship.
Andy compliments Billy for being “open-minded” about the fact that Terry is gay. Elsewhere, we hear that a young woman is married to a man who is gay.
During an ultrasound appointment, Grace has some conversation with her doctor about whether she can have sex late her pregnancy.
Alexander (Terry’s young son) is playing with Billy and Mose when he has a seizure and hits his head, requiring stiches. We don’t see it happen, but we hear the other kids yelling for their dad to come quick. We see Alexander sleeping in a hospital and hear about what happened.
We hear three f-words and 10 s-words. God’s name is taken in vain about a dozen or so times. Jesus’ name is misused four times. We hear “jeez” twice as well. “H—” and “d—it” are used once each. And the Yiddish word “schmuck” is used twice (as an adjective: “schmucky”).
Various characters drink alcohol, mostly at social events, throughout the film. One scene shows Andy pouring himself a drink when he’s by himself.
We hear that Naomi drank a lot and had also become addicted to prescription painkillers, at least in part because of her marital struggles.
Andy employs a young woman named Tully as a babysitter/nanny who sometimes smokes. Billy tells Andy about it, and he not-so-tactfully tells Tully not to engage in “cancer-causing activities” around his kids.
Andy has a hard time telling the truth at some points, especially to his kids. Both Andy and Naomi lie to them for quite some time about their whereabouts. Billy, who’s precocious beyond her years, eventually corners Andy and asks how she’s supposed to trust anything he says when he often doesn’t tell her the truth.
When Billy asks her dad what “rehab” means, he’s reluctant to tell her. That prompts her threat, “I’m just gonna Google it” if he doesn’t give her a real answer answer.
A feminist comedian thanks her supportive and mostly female crowd at a club at end of her performance, saying that women supporting women is good and that now their “periods will be synced up.”
We get the sense that Andy has been fairly successful at using words, paired with plausible excuses, to talk his way out of trouble throughout much of his life. Sometimes he even talks himself out of facing the truth. Much of the story is, in a sense, Andy being forced to reckon with the reality that his lies, even if well-intended and “understandable” ones, have allowed him to let himself off the hook for taking responsibility in many areas of his life.
Andy won’t let his 9-year-old kids watch an unnamed movie because it’s PG-13.
Goodrich writer and director Hallie Meyers-Shyer told The New York Times, “I wrote it 100 percent with [Michael Keaton] in mind [for the character Andy Goodrich], to the point where if he had said no, I would have buried it and myself in the backyard.”
I can see why. Keaton has enjoyed a lot of critical praise for a number of his recent films, and Goodrich adds to that resume. He’s utterly believable as a well-meaning but clueless workaholic who gradually awakens to the harsh reality that he’s done real damage to his closest relationships.
I suspect that many fathers and husbands could, at some level, relate. Yes, in some ways it’s a stereotype we’ve seen onscreen many times before. But Keaton’s portrayal here—even in Andy’s headshaking cluelessness—still hits close to home. I found myself relating to this story both as a son of a father who worked very hard and as a father and husband who now grapples with the same temptation: namely, missing out on life’s most important relationships because we’re too focused on our tasks and passions outside of the family.
Cue up Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle,” if you would.
Not unlike a good Hallmark movie, there aren’t too many surprises here. We know where the story is headed, yet it’s effective nonetheless because Keaton’s Andy is a man many of us could relate to.
Because of that, it’s disappointing that the film indulged in enough language to earn an R-rating—a decidedly unnecessary, if “authentic,” indulgence that might limit this story’s audience. Ditto the culturally requisite gay character’s storyline, though Terry is pretty sympathetic as a heartbroken single dad.
As the credits roll, I’ll confess that I got a bit misty-eyed. As men, sometimes we miss the mark. Goodrich reminds us of that, and it suggests—redemptively—that even if we’ve missed that mark for a long time, there’s still a chance to make a redemptive course correction before it’s too late.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
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