Goodrich – A Fairly Standard Heartwarmer

Being woken up in the middle of the night to your wife telling you that she’s both going to rehab and leaving you is not exactly how most people imagine their days going. In Goodrich, Andy Goodrich’s (Keaton) life is thrown upside down when he gets that unexpected call from his wife Naomi (Laura Benanti). As a result, Andy must be the sole parent for their nine-year old twins, along with being the owner of a failing art gallery, all whilst navigating his complicated relationship with his oldest daughter Grace (Kunis), who was also pregnant. While the film doesn’t exactly break any barriers or do anything new, its story is predictable and its characters and their motivations are pretty thin. Nonetheless, the film remains pretty heartwarming, if a little dull and overlong.

Andy Goodrich is a father to three children (depending on how many he remembers he has) and the owner of an art gallery that struggles to pay its rent. When his wife suddenly goes to rehab, he comes to the realization that he was so invested in his work, that he had no idea about anything that was going on, nor that his wife was struggling or even that their marriage was failing. He must now actually parent his two school aged children, be there for his pregnant daughter, and attempt to find an artist that can save his failing gallery. While the film is a bit rough at first, as Andy was largely absent from his children’s lives despite living with them the whole time. Though it fails to present any new ideas or new concepts, it doesn’t make the film any less heartwarming.

That being said, the film suffers from being a little too stuffed at times. By the end, after starting with so many plot threads, half were barely even concluded well. By the time its almost two hour runtime is complete, one can’t help but wish for some of them to have been given more time and space to be better fleshed out. The biggest casualty of this was Andy’s relationship with Grace, a thread that was fairly underwritten, with some of it perhaps being rewritten in order to allow for other elements more room to breathe. While the use of multiple of threads makes sense, trying to convey the extent of Andy’s actions and his carelessness with his family and those around him, it left some underbaked.

Though it is interesting to see the relationship between the characters change over the course of the film, some of them felt rather thin and could have been more fleshed out. There are times in which it would have been nice to have explored Grace and the impact of her father’s choices on her as an adult. Missing for large stretches of the film, it feels kind of split, dividing its time between his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his younger kids, his oldest daughter, and his relationship with his work. The result is a good array of instances where Andy must confront himself and his drive for work, but it also means that none of those threads are deeply thought out. Rather, they all remain surface level, never digging too deep about why Andy works so much, or into Grace’s resentment over seeing her father bond with her younger siblings, when it would have been better served by dove into one of those deeply, fleshing out their ideas and feelings, rather than having a multitude of smaller, less throughout plot threads.

None of this diminishes the film all that much, however. As Andy, Keaton plays a great ‘useless dad’ who must parent his two youngest children for the first time, being confused about what to do while juggling being a parent and work. Kunis, on the other hand, is fantastic playing Andy’s resentful daughter, trying her best to form a relationship with Andy and navigating having her first child. It is just a shame that her character wasn’t more fleshed out. Their relationship is played well, if a little underwritten. There are complexities to their relationship that would have had more of an impact had they been developed more. In spite of its flaws, it was still interesting and intriguing see that evolution.

Goodrich is a harmless, very standard affair of a workaholic parent being thrust into actual parenting for the first time confronted by their desire to overwork and spend time away from their family. Despite being underwritten, its heart stays the same, the bond between a father and his kids. And though it may be a touch too long, beginning to drag by the end, it is still an uplifting film, albeit a standard one at that.

still courtesy of Elevation Pictures

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Jasmine Graham