The Meddler review: a funny and sincere slice of old-fashioned entertainment

Who doesn’t want to see a film in which Susan Sarandon falls in love with JK Simmons from the back of his Harley Davidson? Heck, who doesn’t want to see a film featuring Susan Sarandon as Rose Byrne’s domineering mother? People who have boulders where other people have hearts. That’s who.

Sure enough, Lorene Scafaria’s comic drama goes down very smoothly indeed. Chewing enthusiastically on a Brooklyn accent, Sarandon plays a reasonably merry widow adrift in nicer bits of Los Angeles. Her late husband has left her a sizable legacy and she doesn’t know what to with it (or the free time that it buys her).

She hangs out at the Apple Store and makes friends with one of the young “geniuses”. She offers to pay for another young pal’s lesbian wedding. Most of her time is, however, spent meddling good-naturedly in her daughter’s busy life. The messages she leaves on the younger woman’s phone comprise a running commentary on the action. The push and pull of familial relations form the core narrative of a loosely ordered, old-fashioned entertainment.

Scafaria, director of the fitful Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, based the film on her own experience. Byrne plays a screenwriter who, frustrated by her mom's ubiquity, ends up engaging with her indirectly through an autobiographical project. That screenplay says the things she can't. (Is this getting sufficiently meta-textual for you?)

The interplay between Byrne and Sarandon is convincing and sincere. Simmons, playing an ex-cop with an even temperament, overcomes an excess of narrative quirk – he plays Dolly Parton to his pet chickens – to create a believably fatalistic retiree. The film does, however, lack a bit if grit. Put simply, Sarandon isn’t annoying enough at the beginning. We are being asked to accept that her meddling might drive any reasonable person crazy, but Sarandon can’t resist making her character endlessly lovable.

There are more damaging criticisms we could make of such a film.