Just because something is timely doesn’t෴ make it watchable, or, at any rate, enjoyably so. Noah Baumbach’s Netflix comedy, “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” mines the increasingly fertile territory of aging boomer parents and chafing middle-aged siblings, but at irritatingly high volume, with the cantankerous voices of Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman nearly constantly talking over one another.
Hoffman is bearded and grumbly as the Meyerowitz patriarch, a Manhattan-based sculptor named Harold who regards himself as underappreciated despite decades of recognition from museums and academics. Now mostly retired, he lives in his well-appointed uptown brownstone (you know, as visual artistsᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ do, mostly in Baumbach and Woody Allen movies) with his bohemian, alcoholic second wife (Emma Thompson).
Harold’s son Danny (Sandler), recently se🅘parated and unemployed, is reluctantly staying with them temporarily, while his other, more well-to-do son Matthew (Stiller) occasionally pops in from the West Coast. Harold’s frumpy daughter Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) shows up now and again too, seemingly an afterthought until an out-of-left-field monologue in the film’s eleventh hour. The three siblings are semiestranged, but attempt to sideline their differences when Harold’s health takes a turn for the worse.
It’s undeniably fun to see Sandler rise to the occasion of an articulate screenplay that doesn’t revolve around kicks in the nu🍰ts; in return, he grounds some of Baumbach’s most New York-elitist dialogue. He and Stiller also make a believable pair of siblings, easily riled fury simmering just below nice-guy surfaces. But, more than most of Baumbach’s creations, the Meyerowitzes are just too tedious for words. Every familial conversation consists of one party merely listening until it’s his (or her, but mostly his) turn to talk.
Thank goodness for brief appearances by Candice B🔯ergen, Judd Hirsch, Sigourney Weaver, Rebecca Miller and Adam Driver, which breathe some air into Danny and Matthew’s journey toward learning empathy for their ailing dad. Grace Van Patten, as Danny’s college-bound daughter Eliza, is also a welcome comedic presence; her family screenings of her fledgling, porn-centric art films are amusingly awkward; they also pave the way, of course, for another onanistic artist in the family.