Last Weekend

This debut film from Tom Dolby (son of audio genius Ray Dolby and unrelated to musician Thomas Dolby) and Tom Williams has all the earmarks of having been made by the overprivileged about the overprivileged and for … damned if I know who. This is a film where the central drama — to the degree there is one — hinges on whether or not Celia (Patricia Clarkson) and Malcolm Green (Chris Mulkey) should sell one of their vacation homes. This is not exactly a hot-button issue for most of us. It’s as if Messrs. Dolby and Williams took that line from The Philadelphia Story about one of the finest sights in this world being “watching the privileged classes enjoying their privileges” too much to heart — and forgot that the characters needed to be likable and housed in a stylish comedy for that to work. If I could make myself believe that Last Weekend was meant to be a satirical jab at the vacuously wealthy and their sense of entitlement, I’d have more use for their film. But this seems to be dead earnest about the woes of these insufferably out-of-touch upscale folks and their absurd First World problems. It’s a film that seems less ill-intended than just utterly clueless.

As the title implies, the film covers the last weekend at the family’s summer retreat (well, one of them anyway) — the one on Lake Tahoe. (If it looks familiar, it’s the same house George Stevens used in A Place in the Sun, his 1951 version of An American Tragedy.) It’s Labor Day weekend — and, of course, possibly the last weekend the family will ever spend here, though Celia and Malcolm have kept this to themselves — and, it seems, most of the neighbors. It is, however, being kept from their children, who are visiting for the holiday. The older son, Theo (Zachary Booth), arrives with a veritable entourage — his boss (Rutina Wesley), her husband (Fran Kranz), the star (Jayma Mays) of the TV show he writes for, and, last and possibly least, Theo’s new boyfriend, Luke (Devon Graye). Why the parade? Well, Theo’s boss is reading his attempt at a screenplay. (Don’t worry. Like most things in the film, this will go nowhere.) Then there’s the younger son, Roger (Joseph Cross), who has just been canned for losing his firm $30 million (something he wants to hide from the folks). He comes with girlfriend Vanessa (Alexia Rasmussen), who is out to get Malcolm to carry her line of designer water in his chain of fitness centers. Filling out the already crowded cast are the caretakers, Hector (Julio Oscar Mechoso) and Maria (Julie Carmen), a couple of bitchy family friends (Shelia Kelley and Mary Kay Place), and a next-door neighbor (Judith Light), whom the Greens look down on as tastelessly nouveau riche. But most of these folks exist to goose the plot or wander in for purposes of exposition.

Of course, the weekend is a disaster — otherwise, there’d be no point in the movie. No, this isn’t one of those clever, if brittle, affairs where a dysfunctional family trades witty barbs. There is, in fact, a notable absence of wit. In its place we get whining, furtiveness, cluelessness — and the occasional dead-end subplot. (See Roger’s abortive extramarital fling and the largely pointless upscale fundraiser party.) We get a near tragedy when Luke has an allergic reaction to a salmon dinner — an event made annoyingly incomprehensible by Celia not wanting to use an EpiPen because of the expense. (Celia wasn’t very tolerable before this, and her character never recovers from this scripting blunder.) Hector gets electrocuted and airlifted to a hospital where Maria joins him, leaving the family and guests without servants. And … oh, it hardly matters.

The movie wanders around — despite attempts to give it some kind of form by announcing the days as if this was The Shining — while we watch unlikable characters say and do unlikable things. Finally, the weekend ends and everybody can go home — including the audience. Technically, the movie is competent, but never inspired. The cast is entirely too good for the material but is helpless to elevate it.  I’ve often said that all movies could be improved by ending with a stampede of monkeys. Here’s one that needed our simian friends at the 15-minute mark. Not Rated, but contains adult themes and language.