‘Ex-Husbands’ Review: Griffin Dunne Charms in an Overfamiliar Comic Drama About Men Minus Women
variety.comJessica Kiang Perhaps deciding that the relationship tribulations of white, coastal-American men of medium-to-high class-privilege levels — which were well-served on the big screen in previous decades — have been rather overlooked of late, writer-director Noah Pritzker goes back to the well of male midlife neurosis for his sophomore feature and dredges up not quite enough to fill up one amiable indie dramedy.
Powered largely by the affability of Griffin Dunne playing a reluctant pending-divorcé whose aging father has recently left his aging mother and whose adult son is having woman troubles of his own, “Ex-Husbands” which world-premieres at the San Sebastian Film Festival, is likable enough in intention, but flounders en route to its destination.
Not unlike its befuddled protagonists, who can’t seem to translate meaning well into doing well. We meet Peter Pearce (Dunne), a New York dentist, in the Walter Reade Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center — like many of the film’s signifiers of cultural sophistication, this one is rather obviously signposted — where he is going to see a movie with his father Simon (a spiky Richard Benjamin).
As they await the arrival of their respective wives, Simon confides in his son that he has decided, in his mid-80s, to divorce from Peter’s mother (his wife of 65 years), reckoning that he has another “25 good years” to play the field.
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