Lullaby

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Andrew Levitas/Starring: Richard Jenkins, Garrett Hedlund, Amy Adams, Anne Archer, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Hudson, Terrence Howard and Jessica Barden

With a cast like that of Lullaby, one might think director Andrew Levitas would have little trouble dramatizing a dying man's last day but somehow an awe-inspiring assemblage of talent can't save what is essentially a dull, tedious, slog.

Richard Jenkins plays Robert Lowenstein, a one-time, cunning business executive who is now literally on his deathbed. He has lost his resolve to fight his illness and is eager to remove the machines and tubes to which he is connected, thus bringing his life to a tragic end. While his wife Rachel (Anne Archer) tends to him, she also defies his efforts to end his life. So far, so fine. Enter his son Jonathan (Garrett Hedlund); a broody, James Dean-like musician who has returned, albeit reluctantly, to see his father and mend the discord between them these past 12 years. Garrett Hedlund is a charismatic actor who has yet to find his breaththrough role. One might remember him from Inside Llewyn Davis as the mysterious, taciturn companion of John Goodman. Here he is the figure around whom other characters and actions seem to revolve, which is strange; given the fact that it is his father who is dying. Not long after Jonathan arrives, his lawyer-sister, petulantly played by Jessica Brown Findlay, shows up to announce she has initiated an injunction to stop her father from ending his life, which is to take place the next day. Jonathan is outraged and angry as the brother/sister animosity surfaces, thus providing the film another conflict.

It is here where the family dynamics are laid bare: Jonathan angry with his father for past offenses, Jonathan angry with sister for vague reasons (though being absent from his father's side for many years is a major component), daughter angrily rejecting her father's wish to die and the mother also fighting her husband's right to die and...anything else? Thankfully no, though Garrett does meet a 17 year-old girl named Meredith (Jessica Barden)--a terminally ill, bone cancer patient-- in the hospital stairwell while enjoying a family-stress smoke. It is an immediate tip-off from their meeting the two will form some sort of bond during this crisis and become friends. Glaring plot contrivance, anyone?

Joining this circus-like melodrama is Jonathan's old flame Emily, inexplicably played by Amy Adams, whose extraordinary talent can often defibrillate the most insipid movies with her presence and charm. I'm not sure what she saw in such a cardboard cut-out of a role but she is mostly around to remind us how Jonathan not only alienated his family in his past but lovers too. How anyone could waste Adams' talent so badly is mystifying. The same can be said for Terrance Howard and Jennifer Hudson--the doctor and nurse duo tending to Robert--whose characters are so marginal in the story one might think they were movie-catering staffers who happened to step in front of the camera. That's three Oscar-nominated actors relegated to dull, peripheral roles while the principal actors are left to play out unconvincing characters unconvincingly. Anne Archer wears a pained expression throughout, but if it's supposed to be grief, it comes off more as acute dyspepsia.

Hedlund's Jonathan is the young, smoking, existential anti-hero that comes in convenience store script six-packs. We know that sooner or later he will reconcile with his old flame (though not rekindle), dance with the terminally ill Meredith at a makeshift hospital room prom and the family will all gather on the father's bed (Doctor too!), for what must be the greatest orgy of tears in cinema this century.

The film concludes with Jonathan performing a song inspired by his father before a substantial theater gathering, while Emily smiles and sings along in the wings. Everything turns out alright; all the strife is washed away, Jonathan and Meredith blow kisses to one another as a final goodbye and life is beautiful again.

I hope the man sitting next to me didn't interpret my heaving chest as uncontrollable sobbing. If he had looked closer, he might have seen me suppressing seismic laughter. If only the film had been a comedy.