Brad’s Status is proof Ben Stiller has aged like a fine wine. Not quite the silly funnyman he used to be, Stiller has actually under all our White Goodman moustaches been preparing for his graduation from crazy comedy into a sophisticated man who can carry his own comedically as well as dramatically. Noah Baumbach certainly thinks so. Brad’s Status puts Stiller front and center, using his inner monologue is surprisingly effective and subversive (from a movie perspective) ways.
Brad (Stiller) is a normal guy with a lovely wife Melanie (Jenna Fischer) and a talented musician for a son, Troy (Austin Abrams). Brad works for a nonprofit in Sacramento, and is taking Troy on a college campus extravaganza on the east coast while his wife attends a conference. Sounds pleasant enough….except Brad is fighting misery. When he meanders to Facebook he sees college friends of his like Craig (Michael Sheen) on television influencing the world or Billy (Jermaine Clement) living in Hawaii with multiple girlfriends and can’t help but feel like he’s failed in some way. Brad is having this fight with himself in his head, risking freaking out Troy while he prepares for a big college interview.
After 15 minutes I was ready to turn Brad’s Status off in extreme disgust. The movie reeked of a condescending privileged perspective, where problems are internal and fabricated but are made to seem of EXTREME IMPORTANCE because if not, the movie wouldn’t exist. I was instantly regretting renting this, trying to figure out if I could get my money back. But then something starts to happen. Brad keeps most of his neuroses in his head, and raises the same questions to himself I was shouting at him from my couch. The thoughts stay in his head, and he self sensors so as to not sound like a dick to everyone, just like someone struggling with something personal. The movie also gives Brad some reasons to change his thinking: Troy has a problem Brad sees as a way he can help his kid which cheers him up. As important he meets two other musicians Ananya (Shazi Raja) and Maya (Luisa Lee) who are idealistic and come from a perspective Brad has never heard or seen before. As if director Mike White was sensing criticism, Maya and especially Ananya call out Brad on his pointless debating and how his current situation isn’t as terrible as Brad is making it out to be. Plus he finds out Craig, Billy, and his other friends might not be living as perfect of lives in reality as they do online. As Brad learns these new facts, he remains himself, but this new perspective helps him suppress some of the worries he has and focuses on the parts of his life that make him happier.
I’ve seen Stiller pull off dramatic work like this as part of an ensemble, usually surrounded by established serious thespians (Greta Gerwig and Gene Hackman come to mind). He’s on his own here, with the whole film revolving around what’s going on in his head, actively time jumping until we get to another moment for Brad to experience/learn something. And you know what? He pulls it off! This is as subdued as I’ve seen Stiller, pushing all this nervous narration in his head down so on the surface he mostly is calm. Within the calm the actor finds subtle emotions like frustration, anger, despair, excitement threatening to burst out, but Stiller, every time, pulls back before he goes off the rails and brings us back to a new normal, subtly different from the last normal, but showing some emotional progress, a very complicated piece of acting Stiller commits to and delivers. As for the other cast, they’re doing what they can to support Big Ben. Luke Wilson, Jermaine Clement, and Michael Sheen are basically around to deliver either cringe humor or the movie’s big laughs while Stiller is dialing it down; Clement is a riot whenever he shows up, and Sheen is particularly good at a very awkward dinner with Brad. Austin Abrams does a good job playing “chill teenager” which it looks like wasn’t too hard a stretch for him. The revelation is Shazi Raja, who has 2 long scenes, and is so good that Brad starts pivoting his emotions as soon as he leaves her orbit. I’ve never seen or heard of Raja before, but I hope she gets more work.
If you can’t tell, Brad’s Status is pulling double duty as a Facebook reference and how he feels through the movie. Though I wish we would have seen his Facebook status at the end, it doesn’t matter what Brad wrote. Leaving my own thoughts to watch a cool story like this unfold and surprise reminded me of how good it can be to leave up there and connect with the world around me. I think that means a smiley face emoji right?