I’ll be Right There. 2024
Directed by Brandon Walsh.
Starring Edie Falco, Jeannie Berlin, Bradley Whitford, Michael Beach, Sepideh Moafi, Michael Rapaport, Charlie Tahan, Kayli Carter, Bari Hyman, Jack Mulhern, Fred Grandy, and Geoffrey Owens.
SYNOPSIS:
Wanda has her hands full: her 8-month pregnant daughter wants a wedding which her ex-husband is flaking on paying for, her mother thinks she’s dying, her wayward son is either going into rehab or the army, her long-time boyfriend doesn’t excite her, but her new girlfriend doesn’t either, and she barely has time for herself, not that she would know what to do with it anyway.
Regarding movie titles popping up as lines of dialogue, one could probably get pretty sloshed if they took a drink every time Edie Falco’s stressed and exhausted Wanda says, “I’ll be right there” to help someone with a problem in Brandon Walsh’s I’ll Be Right There. These needy individuals include her grown offspring, a mother (Jeannie Berlin) still chain-smoking despite a leukemia diagnosis, an ex-husband who keeps having children with a new family, love interests of different genders, and a down-on-his-luck but sensitively wise man (Michael Beach) who could use some help baking for an event.
Even when the film (courtesy of a screenplay by Jim Beggarly) teeters on the verge of falling too deep into a frustrating repetition of Wanda endlessly cycling between one person in need and the next, a grounded approach to depicting her family and life gives this material a lived-in, realistically messy touch. There is dysfunction in the family, with daughter Sarah (Kayli Carter) unsure if she is fit to be a mother while sometimes second-guessing if she wants to marry her boyfriend Eugene (Jack Mulhern), a situation she already dedicates so much time to that it sometimes leaves her late or absent to therapy sessions alongside her son Mark (Charlie Tahan), leaving almost no room for her love life beyond casual dating or sexual encounters.
Speaking of such, she is also a closeted bisexual, technically romantically intertwined with Marshall (Michael Rapaport) despite coming across as sexually disinterested in him. She doesn’t have the heart to break up with him since he has also offered to pay for half of Sarah’s wedding, a half that her ex-husband Henry (Bradley Whitford) can no longer afford. The only moments she genuinely seems happy are during lustful encounters with a woman half her age (not that it makes a difference), Sophie (Sepideh Moafi). However, even that is beginning to feel skin deep and with irritating limitations since she remains against letting Wanda meet her friends.
Veering from destination to destination and character to character, it may seem like the relatively short 97-minute film doesn’t have the necessary time to deepen everyone here (and in some ways, it disappointingly doesn’t), but that is not the goal. Wanda is given an arc that sees her learning how to balance the never-ending obligation she places on herself to drop what she’s doing and help everyone, with an acceptance that she can’t control everything and should also carve out time for herself to figure out what she does like to do.
Wanda has the understandable belief that the family will fall apart if she isn’t consistently dropping what she is doing on a whim, slowly realizing that behaving this way neglects other friendships, some of which she may want to reassess entirely. Ultimately, she also isn’t responsible for some of her children’s choices and must let go of worrying so much (Mark makes a bold life choice that could benefit his troubles, even if the idea strikes a reasonable motherly concern.) It’s also a film that embraces the ups and downs of motherhood with fulfillment, even if the final moments become a bit awkwardly preachy and overdone as if NFL kicker Harrison Butker did a ghost rewrite on the script.
Beyond Edie Falco’s engaging and convincing frazzled performance, the characters here are lovably quirky, relatably flawed, and funny. They amusingly converse about everything brushes with the law, sex during pregnancies, unusual ways to eat ice cream, and far-fetched tales of generations past in the family. This whole family is A LOT, but since everyone here feels like a believable human being, that works in the film’s chaotic nature. It’s not a film you need to head to a cinema and watch immediately like Wanda running to a loved one in need, but I’ll Be Right There is a small delight elevated by an ensemble adept at conveying wacky and dysfunctional with sincere emotional truths underneath.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
