The cast shines in St. Vincent

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      Starring Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy. Rated PG.

      If you were going to make a bittersweet comedy about a cranky old dude, who would you want as your lead? Bill Murray, natch, with Jack Nicholson as a solid second choice. There’s also Michael Douglas, who recently (in And So It Goes) played reluctant godfather to an adorable neglected child. For the more memorable St. Vincent, Murray himself gives it his considerable all as a Brooklyn misanthrope who comes through for a lonely boy.

      The runty Oliver, played by unpushy newcomer Jaeden Lieberher, is fresh to the rundown street of our even shabbier hero, a hard-drinking, frequently injured Vietnam veteran living on a second-mortgage credit line that has just run out. Melissa McCarthy nails a rare straight role as Oliver’s mom, a newly single medical tech so swamped she agrees to pay her cash-strapped neighbour to watch the lad when she’s at work.

      Oliver’s school is the Catholic kind, and the title here provides a foregone conclusion when amusingly testy teacher (Chris O’Donnell) tasks students with finding modern-day saints. Of course, the boy’s real education comes off-campus, with his new protector teaching him how to fight bullies, bet on the ponies, get into saloons, and hang out with “ladies of the night”, as exemplified by Naomi Watts’s tough-talking and very pregnant Russian stripper-prostitute.

      Vinnie’s money troubles persist, especially when Terrence Howard’s understandably exasperated bookie comes around. But all of this is forgotten in the third act of this sophomore feature for writer-director Theodore Melfi, who has a sharper ear for smart dialogue than for plot logic. The filmmaker also has a keen eye for slo-mo Movie Moments that trailer well, supported by appropriate music from Jeff Tweedy and others. Oddly, though, St. Vincent’s more cloying excesses don’t really get in the way—mainly because just the right actor is in almost every scene.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Jessica

      Nov 16, 2014 at 7:10pm

      Not Chris O'Donnell, it's Chris O'Dowd!