THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU: THE CRITICS ARE WRONG ABOUT THIS ONE

This Is Where I Leave You is an American Comedy-Drama Film directed by Shawn Levy. The film was written by Jonathan Tropper, and stars Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard, and Jane Fonda. It is based on the 2009 novel of the same title, also written by Tropper. The film tells the story of four grown siblings who are forced to return to their childhood home after their father's death and live under the same roof for seven days, along with their over-sharing mother and an assortment of spouses, exes, and might-have-beens.

The film was released on September 19, 2014, and grossed $41.3 million against a $19.8 million production budget, and currently has a surprisingly disappointing 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a markedly better Audience Score of 60%. It also has an equally puzzling Metascore of 44 (based on 39 critic reviews) on Metacritic, again with a noticeably better User Score of 6.6, and a 6.6/10 on IMDb (based on over 85,000 reviews).

I have to say, the critics surprised me with this one. This film has astonishingly low scores on all of the major aggregators, but the audience scores on those sites are all conspicuously better, which just adds to my confusion. In my opinion, this film was very good character-driven drama. But, maybe I’m biased, because as a screenwriter, character-driven drama is my bread and butter.

This story was an interesting one to be sure, and Shawn Levy, Paula Weinstein and Jeffrey Levine assembled an Avengers-like cast in order to tell it. The film is full of set pieces, and the characters do a lot of talking about themselves, but I tend to love movies like that, especially when the writing and the acting is as good as it is in this film. And speaking of the writing, the dialogue felt fluent and clever where all of the featured characters are concerned, probably because the writer of the book also wrote the movie. The story flows pretty effortlessly from one plot point to the next, while covering topics with serious themes in a way that shows it doesn’t take itself too seriously, all while providing a few laughs along the way.

Most importantly, the film successfully lands the plane. The closing image effectively “closes the loop” on the story of Bateman’s “Judd Altman”, who is clearly the focus of this story, even though he is surrounded by one of the best casts I’ve seen in quite some time.

The film feels like a play, and I mean that as a compliment. And I understand that movies like that are not as commercial as $200 million dollar mainstream blockbusters, which might be the biggest reason for the low scores on Tomatoes, Metacritic and the like. But this film is full of amazing performances by all involved, and if you’re a fan of good acting, you can’t go wrong adding this movie to your film library.

This is Where I Leave You is available on Netflix (with subscription). It’s also available for rent on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Redbox and VUDU (for $2.49 - $2.99).