The Problem With People

 

This review may contain spoilers!

The Problem With People is about an Irish family and their Irish-American relations attempting to reunite after a decades-long feud. What at first seems like an amiable reconciliation by Ciáran and Barry soon turns into a hilarious reignition of the fabled feud.

There is a lot of this film which sits in the realm of comedy, some of it works well and some of it doesn't. However, I enjoyed how unapologetically quirky this film was, particularly when it sat with the Irish performers. The real comedic strength of the film is no one individual performance but seeing how Meaney and Reiser bounce off one another, the pair clearly get along and know how to draw a grin from their scene partner. The twist wedding at the end of this film was a hysterical curveball, with some surprisingly decent foreshadowing.

Paul Reiser. who played Barry, has a decent dry wit and gruff edge that serve the character; Reiser displays a genuine passion for this project he has crafted which shines through in the performance. Des Keogh, who played Fergus, has some of the more exposition-heavy lines and weaves them like an exquisite storyteller; Keogh is capable of both a touching performance and a hysterical one in equal measure.

However, the best performance came from Colm Meaney, who played Ciáran. This man has always been a phenomenal character actor and this film is no different. Ciáran is a very mild-mannered figure at first, someone you could easily meet on the street and share an easy conversation with. Meaney shows a great deal of care for his on-screen dying father (Keogh) and is a real community man. Yet the mean streak that comes from his envy of Barry is a point of fun and really allows Meaney to cut loose a little. Overall, it's a very fun role and for someone as versatile as Colm Meaney that works very well indeed.

This film has a pretty terrible script and that remains consistent from start to finish, the reconciliation of the family paired with another final feud before reconciliation should surprise no one. But more than that, this film really tugs on no heartstrings, Ciáran and Barry wind up being older guys who meet for the first time and fight over a will. If there's something worth falling in love with or relatable in that it seems a bit bleak. The film doesn't even do a good job of capturing Barry's sudden love for Ireland. He seems very excited about Ireland, but there's barely any good imagery to say why and he has one good time at a pub. The film tries to showcase some external relationships to these two but Barry's relationship with his daughter feels unreal and the relationship he pursues with Fiona feels uncomfortable the manner in which they present it; for that matter Ciáran and Fiona being former partners seems unlikely too. The humour throughout tends to be simplistic or slapstick when it isn't rooted in chemistry between performances; the whole thing stumbles around looking for easy laughs. Overall, the film has a simple script that feels like it was penned by an inexperienced writer trialling their first project.

The Problem With People is a decidedly ugly-looking film, which is unusual given this film has a homecoming element to it and really should be making use of Irish location shooting. The cinematography can get downright to some odd angle choices and poor shooting for entire scenes at a time. The animation for the flashback scenes really was another weak point, with poor design and barely rendered character models for the story. The score was pretty safe, using a lot of classically Irish sounds to place us in the setting but struggling to lend an extra edge to the tone of the feature.

Lucianne McEvoy, who played Fiona, is both a shoulder to lean on and a point of conflict that feels awkwardly inserted into the story; McEvoy feels unsure of her position as this sort of/sort of not love interest. Jane Levy, who played Natalya, really doesn't have the chemistry needed with Reiser to play a convincing on-screen daughter; she feels so external to the main narrative that her presence often feels unnecessary. Patrick Martins, who played Padraig, doesn't really lend much to the feature; his role is supposed to feel strongly aligned with Meaney but there's not much between them. Eimear Morrissey, who played Sargent Lizzie McGrath, is a very over the top comedic role; this bumbling cop performance is difficult to watch at times.

I really wish Paul Reiser could have been like any other celebrity and written a travel book. I would give The Problem With People a 3.5/10.