October 24, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area, the comedy/drama film “Goodrich” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A workaholic gallery owner, whose longtime business is on the verge of failing, has to raise his 9-year-old twins on his own while his estranged wife is in rehab and his 36-year-old daughter from a previous marriage is about to give birth to her first child.
Culture Audience: “Goodrich” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and well-acted comedies/dramas about families going through emotionally difficult transitions.
“Goodrich” is a sprawling, uneven comedy/drama about a workaholic art gallery owner with turmoil in his personal life and professional life. The cast members’ believable performances improve a story that sometimes wanders too much. “Goodrich” portrays adult issues in realistic ways. But to its detriment, the movie has some scenes that don’t serve much purpose except being filler.
Written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer, “Goodrich” is the type of movie that typically doesn’t get a theatrical release and is more likely to be a direct-to-video release or an original movie from a streaming service. That’s because it’s becoming increasingly uncommon for U.S.-based live-action movies about family problems to get a theatrical release unless the focus of the movie is on the children in the family. It’s even more uncommon for the protagonist to be an elderly father who’s raising pre-teen children on his own.
“Goodrich” (which was filmed on location in the Los Angeles area) takes place over a three-month period, from September to December. The story is told from the perspective of protagonist Andy Goodrich (played by Michael Keaton), the owner of Goodrich Gallery, a boutique art gallery in Los Angeles that has been in business for about 28 years. Andy, who is his early 70s, is so preoccupied with his work, he tends to not notice things that are going on in his immediate family. Throughout the movie, it’s implied that his workaholic ways were the main reason why his first marriage ended in divorce.
Andy thinks he’s a good guy, but there are huge indications that he’s self-absorbed and has made his job the top priority in his life for a very long time. The movie’s opening scene shows Andy getting a phone call late at night when he’s at home. The call is from his second and current wife Naomi Parsons (played by Laura Benanti), who announces that she has checked into a 90-day rehab program at a recovery center called Journeys because of her addictions to alcohol and pills. (Naomi isn’t seen in the movie until the last 15 minutes.)
Andy is shocked because he wasn’t even aware that Naomi has these addictions. He tells her that he just thought that she sometimes drank too much alcohol. Naomi is annoyed but not surprised. “Didn’t you notice that I didn’t come home?” Naomi asks Andy, who admits that he hadn’t really noticed. Naomi then drops another bombshell on Andy when she announces to him: “I’m leaving you.”
Naomi and Andy are parents to 9-year-old twins: daughter Billie (played by Vivien Lyra Blair) and son Mose (played by Jacob Kopera), who don’t know that Naomi is in rehab. Billie is the more talkative and more intuitive twin. She’s also more emotionally mature than her brother.
Andy doesn’t know how to handle the sudden responsibility of being the primary caregiver parent for the twins. And he doesn’t want to tell them the truth about why they won’t be able to see Naomi for the next 90 days. And so, the next morning, Andy lies by telling Billie and Mose that Naomi has a doctor’s appointment.
Andy has a part-time housekeeper named Tali (played by Noa Fisher), who is helpful, but she’s not really a nanny. Now that Andy is the primary caregiver for the kids, he’s been thrown into a situation where he has no idea what the kids’ daily routines are and what they might need when they’re at school, at home, or elsewhere. Naomi didn’t leave any instructions for him before she checked into rehab.
Still in denial that Naomi is in long-term rehab, Andy drives to Promises, where he is told Naomi gave the rehab center strict orders not to let Andy see her or communicate with her while she’s in rehab. He is shocked and angry but that anger turns into confusion and remorse. Andy continues to lie to Billie and Mose about where Naomi is.
Andy changes his story to say that Naomi is visiting her mother in St. Louis, and he’s not sure when Naomi will come home. The twins are worried but they trust what Andy tells them. Andy doesn’t want the twins to know the truth because he thinks it would be too traumatic for Billie and Mose. But the reality is that Andy doesn’t want to completely face the truth himself, partly because of the guilt and shame he feels over the whole situation.
Later in the movie, it’s shown that Andy’s voice mail messages to Naomi go unreturned. The letters he sends to Naomi are sent back as “return to sender” letters. Andy finds out that Naomi has called Billie and Mose and told the same lie about visiting her mother in St. Louis, in order to keep up the charade. Even after all of these signs that Naomi wants to end the marriage, Andy still thinks that Naomi will change her mind when she’s out of rehab.
Meanwhile, Andy’s eldest child is his 36-year-old daughter Grace (played by Mila Kunis), who is going through a very different type of parental issue: In the beginning of the movie, Grace is about seven months pregnant with her first child. Grace is a senior entertainment writer at an unnamed media outlet. She’s married to mild-mannered Pete (played by Danny Deferrari), a doctor who is an ear/nose/throat specialist. Pete and Grace both do not want to know the gender of their unborn child until the baby is born.
Grace and Pete are first seen during an appointment with Grace’s obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Verma (played by Poorna Jagannathan), who talks about some dietary concerns that Grace is having. Before Dr. Verma enters the exam room, Grace confides in Pete (who is a very supportive and loving husband) that she doesn’t know why she feels she might get fired if she asks her female boss to go on extended maternity leave. Grace is struggling with deciding if she wants to quit her job to become a full-time homemaker.
Andy’s relationship with Grace has had its share of ups and downs. He was a mostly absentee parent to Grace after he got divorced from Grace’s mother Ann (played by Andie MacDowell), who is currently director of the Walton Museum in downtown Los Angeles. Ann and Andy were married for 14 years. All of this information about Andy’s previous marriage isn’t revealed until the movie is halfway over.
Now that Andy is about to become a grandfather, he reconnected with Grace, who is open to being friendly with Andy, but she’s still a little bit wary of him because she has abandonment issues. Grace dislikes how Andy doesn’t seem to approve of Pete because Andy thinks Pete is nerdy. Grace is also uncomfortable with how Andy sometimes asks her to babysit Billie and Mose on short notice.
Andy is not only stressed-out over the problems in his personal life, but he’s also overwhelmed and struggling with his career. Andy and his business partner Sy (played by Kevin Pollak) are in a lot of debt. In order to reduce costs, they’ve had to decide whether to relocate to a gallery space that has lower rent or decrease the seller asking rate for their artists. Andy adamantly refuses to lower the rates for their artists.
But relocating to a place with lower rent won’t solve Goodrich Gallery’s financial problems. In a meeting with the gallery’s accountant Greg (played by Andrew Leeds), Greg warns Andy and Sy that unless they get a big increase in revenue, the gallery will go out of business in three months. Andy is certain that a talented young artist named Dev (who’s never seen in the movie), whose recent exhibit at the gallery was a flop, could be still be their last big chance of success. Sy isn’t entirely convinced.
And then, Andy finds out that a critically acclaimed, elderly artist named Theresa Thompson has died. Theresa’s artwork is considered hot property, so Andy thinks if Goodrich Gallery can get the rights to exhibit her work, it could be an even bigger financial boost that could help Goodrich Gallery stay in business. Andy has to convince Theresa’s elusive heir/daughter Lola Thompson (played by Carmen Ejogo), who is getting many other offers from bigger galleries. Andy goes to unusual lengths to track down Lola (a 50-year-old single mother) so that he can make his pitch to her in person.
“Goodrich” also has a subplot about Andy becoming friendly with a single father named Terry Koch (played by Michael Urie), whose son Alexander, nicknamed Alex (played by Carlos Solórzano), is a schoolmate friend of Billie and Mose. Terry is gay and divorced from Alex’s other father, who abandoned the family. Andy and Terry meet by chance when Billie, Mose and Alex are late to school on the same day. Because Alex has epilepsy, Alex is excused for his tardiness, while Billie and Mose are not excused.
Andy and Terry strike up a conversation outside the school building after the kids have gone to their classrooms. Terry is a somewhat neurotic motormouth who immediately tells Andy about how he came a single father. Terry also mentions that he’s an actor who has a day job in graphic design. It’s during this conversation that Andy opens up about Naomi and how Andy is also having difficulty adjusting to raising his kids on his own until Naomi figures out what she wants to do after she gets out of rehab.
“Goodrich” sort of ambles along to show how Andy divides his time between his work and his personal life. He prides himself on being macho and being someone who does not cry easily. Andy is worried about losing his business, but he has a certain amount of pride in not letting this worry show. He’s also convinced he can come up with an idea to save the business.
Andy has a restless energy that doesn’t always gel with the patience required to suddenly take care of two 9-year-old kids and still find time to focus on work and pay attention to Grace. He sometimes forgets appointments and doesn’t know how to do things, such as make lunch for Billie and Mose to bring to school. Andy doesn’t know (until Billie tells him) that the private school where his children are students does not serve lunch unless it’s on special occasions.
During the parts of the movie that tend to ramble, viewers might wonder, “Where is this story going? Do we really need to see Andy in yet another scene where he’s rushing somewhere because he’s running late in picking up his kids or taking his kids somewhere?” To its credit, the tone of “Goodrich” seems to be a “take life as it comes” story, instead of hitting certain formulaic beats that many other movies would have with this subject matter of a man who finds himself suddenly having to raise underage kids on his own.
The strongest and best-acted parts of “Goodrich” have to do with the tensions that can occur when a parent has a distant relationship with offspring from a previous marriage and tries to make up for it with offspring from a current marriage. It can cause resentment and jealousy from the offspring from the previous marriage who didn’t get the parent’s attention that the offspring from the current marriage is getting. Grace sees up close that Andy is a very different father to Billie and Mose than the father he was when Grace was an underage child.
Near the end of the movie, there’s a well-written, emotionally explosive scene between Grace and Andy where she unleashes just how she feels about missing out on the time and attention that Andy now has for Billie and Mose. It’s in this scene that Andy truly begins to understand the damage caused by being absent for most of Grace’s childhood. It’s Kunis’ best scene in the movie, which doesn’t show her as often as the marketing materials for “Goodrich” would suggest.
Keaton does a very good job of portraying the complicated and ambitious Andy, who slowly begins to learn how to have a work/life balance. Andy says he loves Naomi and wants to keep their family intact. However, the movie shows that Andy has unresolved issues that he has not confronted yet, such as his tendency to be in denial about serious problems that affect him and his family. For example, Grace wasn’t shocked that Naomi had to go to rehab, but Andy was shocked.
“Goodrich” doesn’t show Andy in any counseling for people who have loved ones with addictions, but he does seek solace in another way by communing with a group where Grace gets emotional healing. The movie ignores or doesn’t address if Naomi is in a 12-step recovery program, which requires addicts to contact and make amends with loved ones for any problems caused by the addict’s addiction. Andy is made to look like an emotionally absent spouse/parent, but Naomi was surely not a perfect spouse/parent either. “Goodrich” doesn’t go into details about how Naomi’s addictions affected her parenting.
“Goodrich” has solid direction but it seems to take for granted that Andy and Naomi come from a socioeconomic class where Naomi can afford to go to an upscale rehab recovery center. Sure, Andy’s business has financial debt, but it’s not so bad that he has to declare bankruptcy and/or lose the family home. “Goodrich” tends to have a superficial/”barely there” examination of how addiction can affect a family. But “Goodrich” delivers competently on what the movie is about: an upper-middle-class, elderly man coming to terms with the type of parent he wants to be to his adult child and his two underage children.
Ketchup Entertainment released “Goodrich” in U.S. cinemas on October 18, 2024.
