C'mon Down with “C'mon C'mon”

 

C’mon C’mon is a movie that has to grow on you, like an ornery kid with whom you’ve suddenly been saddled. He ricochets around, talking a blue streak, and mostly you wish for a modicum of peace and quiet. But all at once, just before you reach the end of your tether, you realize that life with him in it has gotten a great deal more interesting. That he is, in fact, irreplaceable.

 What I’m describing, of course, is the central situation in Mike Mills’ small movie, which debuted last summer at the Telluride Film Festival, to much critical acclaim. It’s too modest in its ambitions to be an Oscar sort of movie, but it was up for various independent film awards. I saw it on an airplane, not the ideal place to follow a flick that bounces around in time. Still, its small scale and basic simplicity made my trip through the skies pass nicely, and its ultimately upbeat message helped make those skies seem more friendly than usual.

 Writer-director Mills, who’s married to fellow indie phenom Miranda July, has attracted attention with some bigger films. In 2012, Christopher Plummer won his Oscar for portraying a character in Mills’ Beginners who was in fact a version of Mills’ own dad. (It’s one of those amazing stories: Six months after Mills’ mother died of brain cancer, his father came out as gay at age 75. After 45 years of marriage, he was suddenly ready to try his newly revealed orientation on for size, creating much consternation among his offspring.) In 2016, Mills wrote and directed 20^th Century Women, which gave Annette Bening a much-heralded role, along with an Oscar nomination for Mills’ screenplay.

 Clearly, prominent actors like to be challenged by Mills’ character-driven material. His star in C’mon C’mon is Joaquin Phoenix, in his first feature since winning an Academy Award for the macabre title role in Joker. Phoenix’s Johnny in C’mon C’mon is far more of an everyday guy than was Batman’s nemesis, but Johnny too has his share of oversized problems. Johnny, living in NYC, is pretty much alone in the world. There’s a soured romance in his past, and he and his West Coast-based sister, Viv (Gaby Hoffman) haven’t spoken since they quarreled over the handling of their Alzheimer’s-ridden mother. (I, in my economy-class seat, had a hard time figuring how the mother’s death fit into the story’s basic chronology.) But now, with Viv’s husband having suffered a mental breakdown that requires hospitalization, she is desperate to find a place to stow her precocious but clearly troubled son, Jesse, while she tries to salvage what’s left of her marriage.

 Johnny works as a radio journalist, traveling the country to record interviews in which children talk about their hopes and fears. So he’s used to being around kids. But that’s a far different thing from hanging out with Jesse on a daily basis in his tiny New York walk-up.  Jesse likes to butt up against the adult world,  testing his limits, but he’s also grappling with his own fears of following in his father’s footsteps. It’s only when they end up in New Orleans together, as part of Johnny’s work, that man and boy finally coalesce and form a genuine bond.

 The role of nine-year-old Jesse is crucial to the success of this film. He’s played with impressive authenticity by young Woody Norman. I was stunned to learn that this very L.A. kid was played by a boy born and bred in North London. There was a time when Brits couldn’t convincingly do American accents. Clearly, no more.

C’mon C’mon is a movie that has to grow on you, like an ornery kid with whom you’ve suddenly been saddled. He ricochets around, talking a blue streak, and mostly you wish for a modicum of peace and quiet. But all at once, just before you reach the end of your tether, you realize that life with him in it has gotten a great deal more interesting. That he is, in fact, irreplaceable.

 What I’m describing, of course, is the central situation in Mike Mills’ small movie, which debuted last summer at the Telluride Film Festival, to much critical acclaim. It’s too modest in its ambitions to be an Oscar sort of movie, but it was up for various independent film awards. I saw it on an airplane, not the ideal place to follow a flick that bounces around in time. Still, its small scale and basic simplicity made my trip through the skies pass nicely, and its ultimately upbeat message helped make those skies seem more friendly than usual.

 Writer-director Mills, who’s married to fellow indie phenom Miranda July, has attracted attention with some bigger films. In 2012, Christopher Plummer won his Oscar for portraying a character in Mills’ Beginners who was in fact a version of Mills’ own dad. (It’s one of those amazing stories: Six months after Mills’ mother died of brain cancer, his father came out as gay at age 75. After 45 years of marriage, he was suddenly ready to try his newly revealed orientation on for size, creating much consternation among his offspring.) In 2016, Mills wrote and directed 20^th Century Women, which gave Annette Bening a much-heralded role, along with an Oscar nomination for Mills’ screenplay.

 Clearly, prominent actors like to be challenged by Mills’ character-driven material. His star in C’mon C’mon is Joaquin Phoenix, in his first feature since winning an Academy Award for the macabre title role in Joker. Phoenix’s Johnny in C’mon C’mon is far more of an everyday guy than was Batman’s nemesis, but Johnny too has his share of oversized problems. Johnny, living in NYC, is pretty much alone in the world. There’s a soured romance in his past, and he and his West Coast-based sister, Viv (Gaby Hoffman) haven’t spoken since they quarreled over the handling of their Alzheimer’s-ridden mother. (I, in my economy-class seat, had a hard time figuring how the mother’s death fit into the story’s basic chronology.) But now, with Viv’s husband having suffered a mental breakdown that requires hospitalization, she is desperate to find a place to stow her precocious but clearly troubled son, Jesse, while she tries to salvage what’s left of her marriage.

 Johnny works as a radio journalist, traveling the country to record interviews in which children talk about their hopes and fears. So he’s used to being around kids. But that’s a far different thing from hanging out with Jesse on a daily basis in his tiny New York walk-up.  Jesse likes to butt up against the adult world,  testing his limits, but he’s also grappling with his own fears of following in his father’s footsteps. It’s only when they end up in New Orleans together, as part of Johnny’s work, that man and boy finally coalesce and form a genuine bond.

 The role of nine-year-old Jesse is crucial to the success of this film. He’s played with impressive authenticity by young Woody Norman. I was stunned to learn that this very L.A. kid was played by a boy born and bred in North London. There was a time when Brits couldn’t convincingly do American accents. Clearly, no more.