St. Vincent (2014)

** ½ out of **** 

If Bill Murray hadn't been nominated for an Oscar a decade ago for “Lost in Translation” I would feel sorry for him that he didn't receive one for “St. Vincent”. He is extremely good in it – award-worthy even. However, he wasn't nominated and I can see why; there is barely any acting required. The role of Vincent Mackenna comes too naturally to him – I bet he barely had to rehearse. I've read that Jack Nicholson was originally supposed to play the part and I'm sure it would have come even more naturally to him.... 

Vincent is a crotchety old bugger living alone in Brooklyn. His house is filthy and run down, he spends his days getting hammered and blowing money at the race track, and what disposable income he has left he spends on weekly visits from a pregnant hooker (Naomi Watts). He doesn't like people and for the most part they don't like him.  He lives a very solitary life, and that's how he likes it.

Enter Maggie and Oliver Bronstein (Melissa McCarthy and Jaeden Lieberher) a mother and son who move in next door. They, of course, see Vincent for the mean old guy he is but thanks to necessity Oliver starts to stay with him after school due to his mothers long work hours. Vincent takes the kid to bars, the track, feeds him little else beyond crackers and sardines, and generally walks all over him. Are you expecting to hear that the kid comes to see Vincent's heart of gold and they begin to rely on each other a bit more every day?

Ding ding ding.

It turns out that Vincent is a little deeper than we originally thought. Much of the reason for his poverty is his secret insistence to keep his Alzheimer's-stricken wife in the best nursing home possible. And he was a Vietnam war hero. And much of the reason he wants people to leave him alone is that he is afraid that anyone he might love will again be taken away from him. But despite that he comes to care deeply about his young charge. 

My greatest issue with this movie is that it was utterly predictable straight down the line. There is a formula for movies like this, and “St. Vincent” never deviates from it. And while Murray's performance is very good, I can think of at least a dozen actors that could have done it at least as well. Hell, drop Walter Matthau's “Buttermaker” in here from the “Bad News Bears” (1974) and I don't think you'd have much in the way of a difference. 

Melissa McCarthy is (wonder of wonders) not absolutely awful in her role, though she is still annoying and unlikable. And Naomi Watts is virtually unrecognizable as the Russian hooker. 

Overall it isn't a bad movie, but neither is it anything more than a formula comedy/drama. A couple of good laughs and a nice wrap up pay its admission, but really nothing more.