Review: Fantasy Life — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Fantasy Life

⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: R

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

Stars: Amanda Peet, Matthew Shear, Judd Hirsch

Writer/Director: Matthew Shear

Any film with a cast that includes Amanda Peet, Judd Hirsch, Bob Balaban, Andrea Martin, Holland Taylor, and Jessica Harper is going to have a whole heap o’ goodwill going for it from the get-go. Perhaps that helps explain why this underwritten, too-casually directed comedy won the prestigious Audience Award at the SXSW festival and the Best Ensemble prize at the San Diego International Film Festival.

Still, even at a fleeting hour and a half, Fantasy Life had me wishing just about every single character would just get on with their lives and, please, leave me out of it.

Writer/director/star Matthew Shear (very good in 2024’s Between the Temples) plays Sam, a sad-sack failed accountant who, while visiting his oddly dismissive therapist (Judd Hirsch, playing Judd Hirsch), gets roped into becoming “nanny” to the doc’s three granddaughters. Yes, this may constitute medical malpractice, but it is just one of many plot devices here that seem engineered solely to move the story along. (Would any cognizant mother, for example, place her children in the care of a guy she knows suffers debilitating panic attacks?)

The girls’ mom happens to be a once-busy actress who, after stepping out of the spotlight to raise her children, is now attempting to reassert herself in the business. Amanda Peet, making her first movie in a decade, tackles the role in a pleasantly earnest manner that reflects the meta-ness of it all. Peet is, in fact, the only cast member called upon to actually act here, and she acquits herself admirably, embodying the cruel combination of self-assurance and insecurity that dogs so many folks in show biz.

The rest of the cast simply occupies slots required by the narrative. Shear’s Sam is hopelessly reactive, annoyingly incapable of initiative. As his own director, Shear allows Sam way too much time to sit in silence, seemingly processing situations while never emerging with a cogent way forward. Along with Hirsch, Balaban, Martin, and Harper are asked simply to play loud-mouthed relatives. Sitting around a dinner table in the Hamptons, they chew and jump up from their chairs and yammer dialogue that confuses “pithy” with “shrill.” It’s always good to see Holland Taylor, but here she seems to have been available for a single day of shooting, and so was inserted as a cameo, playing a substitute shrink for Hirsch’s character (who’s been sent off on vacation for no reason that otherwise serves the plot).

Shear is a protégé of the formidable Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Marriage Story), whose earliest work could be similarly loose to the point of languid. He has a nose for quirky characters and directs children particularly well – a valuable skill set, as too many directors seem intent on portraying kids as little grownups.

With luck, Shear will build on his strengths – and keep inviting such marvelous veteran players to help him along.