On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: I MELT WITH YOU (Magnolia).

I MELT WITH YOU

By Chris Claro

If Barry Levinson’s DINER represents the youthful-male-bonding flick, and Rob Reiner’s THE BUCKET LIST is the geezer model of the genre, we now have a contender for the film that falls squarely between the two. Mark Pellington’s I MELT WITH YOU is the story of four guys in their mid-forties whose yearly reunion finds them attempting to hold on to what’s left of their youth and their integrity. An overcaffeinated, overwrought, onslaught of middle-age angst, I MELT WITH YOU is an assault on the eyes and ears that says very little as loudly as it possibly can.

English teacher and failed novelist Richard (Thomas Jane, HUNG) is the first to arrive at the sleek Big Sur house overlooking the Pacific. Next is Tim (Christian McKay, ME AND ORSON WELLES), a sloe-eyed and doleful sort who has suffered an unspecified loss. They’re soon joined by Ron (Jeremy Piven, ENTOURAGE), a trader in trouble with the SEC, and Jonathan (Rob Lowe, PARKS AND RECREATION), a Dr. Feelgood who parses out painkillers to all the real housewives craving numbness.

Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe & Jeremy Piven / I MELT WITH YOU (Magnolia)

In addition to copious quantities of liquor, the quartet engages in 80s-level mountains of cocaine and enough pills to sedate a wildlife preserve. Pellington slowly – much too slowly – reveals their demons and does so by breaking out every gimmick that he used as a director of music videos for Public Enemy, Siverchair, and Foo Fighters: flash-cutting, overexposing the film, undercranking the camera, and a relentless soundtrack filled with artists known for their less-than-mellow tones, including the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Dead Kennedys.

Thomas Jane & Mark Pellington / I MELT WITH YOU (Magnolia)

It’s not until about an hour into Pellington’s gallimaufry that a shred of a story emerges, one that hinges on an agreement made back in the day by the four buddies. When that number dwindles to three, local sheriff Carla Gugino (RIGHTEOUS KILL), who’s about as credible as a cop as she would be portraying the pope, starts snooping around, and I MELT WITH YOU finally – and I do mean “finally” – gains some momentum in the rush to its inexorable and predictable conclusion.