By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Mike White
Cast: Ben Stiller, Austin Abrams, Jenna Fisher, Jemaine Clement, Mike White, Luisa Lee, Shazi Raja, Luke Wilson and Michael Sheen.
Rating: Excellent.
Writer/Director Mike White brings another movie this year and he does it with “Brad`s Status” and this is a must see movie.
The movie tells the story of Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller) a man who recently founded he´s not profit company and is married to Melanie Sloan (Jenna Fisher) who works in politics.
Both are the parents of Troy (Austin Abrams) a talented aspiring musician who wants to get into college. Bradi will take a trip with Troy to the East Coast to see Troy´s options in college and both arrive to Boston where Troy has the major desire to get into Harvard University.
Knowing that is a University that not only has a high tuition but to get in is difficult, Brad will do anything to help his son to get in one of the most prestigious institutions in the country.
In this trip both Brad and Troy will learn about the true importance of family, spending time with each other and cherish every single moment like it is the last.
Like I mentioned before “Brad´s Status” is a movie that works at all levels and this is due to the wonderful screenplay that Mike White wrote.
He wrote very unique and special characters in this movie and the way how he wrote Brad is too special that we feel for him since the movie starts until the end.
Ben Stiller`s performance is so far the best I have seen in his career and this is the first time that I see him portraying a different character without being himself.
In most of his career he is well known to play every single character as the same. This is with elements like the guy who is always out of luck, that he makes mistakes over and over again like in “There´s Something About Mary” and “Meet The Parents”.
Here he plays a character that he has a major conflict that is that he constantly compares himself to his friends from college and makes him insecure despite having a wife and son who love him unconditionally.
Mike White´s directing to the cast is fantastic and the performance by Austin Abrams as Troy is fantastic. He plays his character with a lot of realism and we route for him that he can fulfill his dream and reach his ultimate goal in the film.
Before I watched this film I honestly didn´t had any expectations towards it and I came in with my mind totally in blank. At the end I was very surprised and moved with this film.
This confirms the great year Mike White is having. He did it first with “Beatriz at Dinner” which he wrote beautifully and is a full frontal criticism of how America is today and unfortunately he had a failure with “The Emoji Movie”. But here he did a great job and he made a very unique and touching movie.
“Brad`s Status” is one of the biggest surprises of this year and I highly recommend it for the performances, writing and the message of this film.