Dreaming in real time

Film review: Brad’s Status

MANILA, Philippines — Written and directed by Mike White and topbilled by Ben Stiller, Brad’s Status is a wry, realistic and ultimately tender treatment of a father’s mid-life crisis and the handling of his severely bruised ego. As such, I’d like to christen it Part III of Stiller’s Trilogy of Existential Crisis — a companion piece to his portrayals in 2013’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and 2014’s While We’re Young.

In a sense, the three films are extensions of the same type of personality — one that Stiller has mastered; prone to torturing himself about the greener grass on the other side and fantasizing about the lives of others and what he could have made of his own if he had done things differently. Released here by Solar Films, it should strike a resonant chord with most middle-aged parents and delivers in a muted, light-hearted manner.

White wrote Nacho Libre and School of Rock, and was known as a frequent collaborator of Jack Black; so the surprise here in Brad’s Status is the gentle touch to the subject matter. With the film chronicling the two days that Brad (Stiller) takes off from work to accompany his only son Troy (Austin Abrams) to Boston for interviews at Harvard and Tufts where he hopes to earn his music degree, Stiller masterfully projects the neuroses that most parents would possess, fueled by the anxiety over how his child will fare. This is complicated by the unhealthy obsession Brad has ruminating on what his best college friends have accomplished in their lives, in contrast to his idealistic non-profit NGO operation.

It is this obsession that provides the humorous Mitty-esque elements, as Brad daydreams about the lives of these friends. With his son Troy, Brad occupies that middle ground between earnest, nice guy and abrasive, schlepping embarrassment. From his Airlines Miles card, to restaurant choices, to handling the Admissions Department personnel and interacting with Troy’s female friends, Brad is that classic middle-aged man pining for his lost youth and clouded with regret. If in Mitty it was grandiose daydreaming and in While We’re Young, it was looking silly trying to be hip, here in Brad’s Status, it’s about questioning life choices and overthinking about what one can do for one’s child.

To White’s credit, he keeps a level tone and pace throughout the film, never exaggerating or over-dramatizing the “moments.” It’s this grounded approach that is both the film’s strength and weakness. Strength because we are never asked to swallow something implausible or out of character. Weakness because there is no real arc or resolution — the film ends asking us to embrace disappointment and doubt as constants we just have to accept as part of our lives. A small film that sparkles without blinding us.

(Brad’s Status is now showing in theaters nationwide.)