Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller) lives in a beautiful house, with his beautiful wife Melanie (Jenna Fischer), runs his own non-profit, and he’s about to go to Boston with his son Troy (Austin Abrams) who is interviewing at universities, with Harvard at the top of the list. For any ordinary 47 year-old, they would look at this life with little to complain about, but Brad lays awake at night asking himself, how did I get here?
The intersection of midlife concerns and Troy’s journey into adulthood has created a crisis of identity for Brad. As he reveals in a self-loathing voiceover, his fellow university graduates have all gone on to fame and fortune: Nick Pascale (played by the film’s writer/director Mike White) is a successful filmmaker; Jason Hatfield (Luke Wilson) runs his own hedge fund; Craig Fisher (Michael Sheen) is a celebrity political pundit and author; and Billy Wearslter (Jemaine Clement) is already retired, having sold his tech company at the age of 40. Essentially, “Brad’s Status” is entirely focused on the jealousy that an accomplished, upper middle class white man has for his 1%-er friends. Yes, it’s as tedious as it sounds.
Brad mopes through his midlife malaise, worrying about his financial future as he lays awake in his king size bed, which sits above a lovely, open concept kitchen. He ponders where he should place the blame for his perceived misfortunes, wondering if Melanie’s cheery spirit and lack of drive made him too complacent. Troy also becomes a handy punching bag for his anxieties, as Brad hangs out in Boston, visiting Harvard and Tufts with his son, wondering where it all went wrong.
As the minutes roll by any thoughts that White will dismantle Brad’s pathetic self-flagellation quickly diminish. The film offers a fleeting moment where it might pivot, when Brad opens up to Troy’s friend Anaya (a terrific Shazi Raja), who is studying government and journalism at Harvard, about where her future might go if she follows his path. As Brad unloads about his woeful life, Anaya remains unimpressed, refusing to commiserate that his privileged existence has come to naught. When Anaya offers actual perspective, reflecting that people have real poverty and cause for worry in other parts of the world, Brad deflects the defense, saying he’s not competing with them to get to the top of the ladder. Not much else comes out of the conversation as “Brad’s Status” quickly gets back to dragging the audience around with Brad, but it seems White establishes this entire sequence merely to swat away the criticisms he knows will meet the picture. He wants us to sympathize with Brad’s plight, rather than engaging with the real issues this premise confronts.
A smarter movie, or at least one more invested in the ideas it glances across, could offer a more insightful look at how idealism evolves with age, what it actually means to “sell out,” and the legitimate realities of middle class concern, particularly at a time when infrastructures for social support are being taken apart. However, “Brad’s Status” plays like a film created by people who actually never experienced, directly or indirectly, anything its characters are going through. The film’s glaring inauthenticity is hard to ignore, and its blinding lack of self-awareness is nearly staggering. At one point Brad whines that white males are the “underdog” at Harvard, forced to compete with the students from around the world who have a compelling “sob story.” This statement goes completely unchallenged.
Equally difficult to overlook is the film’s lack of any cinematic value. Shot with the aesthetic quality of a network show on a budget, the emptiness of the film’s content only highlights its cheap construction. The cinematography by Xavier Grobet is forgettable, White’s direction is perfunctory, and even the performances are mostly warmed over, with Stiller essentially playing a less interesting, less complex version of his character from “Greenberg.”
Strangely constructed, despite lining up a pretty decent supporting cast, Brad spends most of the film talking to everyone over the phone. Instead, we spend most of the movie inside Brad’s head, privy to his increasingly wearying observations (“The world isn’t a playground, it’s battlefield”; “The world hated me and the feeling was mutual”), waiting for some kind of real insight into parenting, careers, education, or anything else the movie addresses with hesitation. “Brad’s Status” rarely affords its titular character an opportunity to have a real conversation with anyone else his own age, so the movie becomes a monologue from someone you quickly realize you don’t really want to get to know anyway. [D]
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