New Film Review: I Melt With You

All middle-aged men are irresponsible jerks who romanticize their youth to the point of psychosis. At least that seems to be the theme of I Melt With You, a new film that is not The Big Chill of the punk rock generation.

D Buddy drama

· Written by Glenn Porter

· Directed by Mark Pellington

The plot sounds like an updated, male-oriented version of The Big Chill and The Return of the Secaucus Seven, about people born in the 1960s rather than having come of age then. Four college buddies, all of them 44, rent a house by the beach so they can party together, take lots of drugs, and have a good time. Life has taken its toll, and they miss the carefree guys that they once were and thought they’d always be.

But I Melt With You is very different from those films of 30 years ago, and not just because the main characters are all men and of a different generation. This is a much darker picture, one that goes into a very different place. But also, unlike those two, I Melt fails almost completely. The picture gives us no reason to care about these four guys and the generation they may or may not represent. Worse, it gives us no insight into them, and doesn’t even succeed in making us believe that they could actually exist.

Richard (Thomas Jane) is the ringleader–if not the leader of the four than certainly the first among equals. He’s single, always has been single. I believe the others follow his lead because he’s an even bigger jerk than they are. Rob Lowe plays Jonathan, the divorced dad and crooked doctor; occasional moments of sensitivity make him a bit less of a jerk. Ron (Jeremy Piven) is married, has children, and takes his responsibilities seriously, but he can still act like a jerk. Tim (Christian McKay) is the nice, sensitive guy with a tragic past. He’s not a jerk. But then, he’s gay (or bi, I’m not sure), which in the world of dramatic film clichés, explains why he’s sensitive and not a jerk.

The guys start altering their consciousness as soon as they get together. They snort coke, smoke pot, drink alcohol, and take assorted pills courtesy of the good doctor. They run naked in the surf, go fishing, drive a red sports car way too fast while coked up, and invite some much younger adults over for a drug-laced party. (One of these young people is played by Sasha Grey, and yes, one of them sort of has sex with her.)

But it’s not all fun and games. Every so often, they get serious and talk about all the ways in which their lives have gone wrong. In doing so, they never say anything I haven’t heard in a 100 better films, or anything that makes them truly unique individuals. Then they go back to being decadent, which never really looks like much fun.

I can’t discuss this film anymore without some mild spoilers. You have been warned.

Almost exactly halfway through the picture, tragedy strikes. I won’t say what happens. I will say that it caught me by surprise, and that it shouldn’t have. From there, I Melt With You takes a really weird turn that might have been shocking if it was believable. The place it goes to is very, very dark. But darkness doesn’t always promise depth. One gets the feeling that the filmmakers thought they were making something profound; they were self-deceived.

And then the whole thing ends with a car chase.