Review

Review Date: 20-June-10
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Junk

Solitary Man (2010)

As Ben Kalmen, the not too solitary man in the movie that calls him so, Michael Douglas gives yet another performance as a glib narcissist out to control the world. Ben is, or was, a car salesman whose grasp of human nature brought him wealth and whose catchy TV spots made him a minor celebrity. His true fame, however, came when he was convicted of swindling his customers and company and narrowly avoided jail time. This happened a few years ago when Ben was in his mid-fifties, and since then he has been heading towards rock bottom.

Watching Solitary Man I was struck with the peculiar impression that the movie is both unoriginal and fanciful, marred simultaneously by cliché and absurd situations trumped up by a grasping screenwriter. In fact the contrived parts exist to emphasize the clichés. For example, Ben sleeps with every young woman he can get his hands on — the standard symbolic action of a guy resisting a trip over the hill — and yet I have a hard time believing that he could make so many conquests, not because of his age so much as because he is so obviously desperate. A pivotal scene finds him bedding the 18-year-old daughter of the woman he is dating. (He is dating this woman solely for the professional connections to which she gives him access.) The daughter, played by a stunning actress with the unfortunate name of Imogen Poots, claims to be interested in his sexual experience, but she is no blushing virgin herself and her actions are oddly capricious both before and after their transgression.

Outside the bedroom Ben is sabotaging his relationship with his own daughter (Jenna Fischer) — he misses his grandson's birthday party, the classic sign of a deficient family man — and failing to claw his way back into the car-selling game. With no income he gets evicted from his home and ends up relying on the charity of an old college buddy (Danny DeVito) who represents an alternative, i.e., solid and modest, way of life. The incongruity of this friendship can be explained by longstanding ties, but there is no explanation for Ben's chumminess with a college student at his alma mater (Jesse Eisenberg) except that it allows him to appear even more pathetic by trying to hang with people forty years his junior.

Considered rationally, Ben is a loser who deserves to be alone. But since he is the star we can be sure the filmmakers do not want him judged in this way. Thus they give him a couple of outs: one, he began behaving badly only after receiving scary medical news, and two, he has a perfectly lovely ex-wife (Susan Sarandon) hovering in the wings. This second fact disposes me to anger more than hope for his redemption. It feels like the kind of self-serving fantasy people like Ben would concoct but shouldn't actually attain, the kind, wise, sexy woman eager to save the lout who screwed her over, offended their daughter, engaged in criminal activity, and attempted to hide his fear by becoming the biggest man-slut the world has ever known. Please. Every human being faces withering and death, some earlier or with more pain than others, and this can only excuse their actions to a point. Solitary Man brings nothing new to this experience, offers no valid insight or reason for pity, and is finally the story of a commonplace putz.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.