SOLITARY MAN 1 ½ stars
Anchor Bay Films, Rated R
Who humans mate with and why they do is a complicated affair, with everyone from shrinks to anthropologists weighing in, which is why the simplistically conceived Solitary Man—about an aging womanizer—lacks the seductive skills to persuade any sincerity or raw truths, at least for this skeptical female critic.
[popup url=”http://assets.longislandpress.com/photos/gallery.php?gazpart=view&gazimage=3335″]
Click here to view more photos from Solitary Man[/popup]
With the narrative deck so enormously stacked against this way-out-of-control fiftysomething sex addict—so much even Michael Douglas seems to be holding the character at arm’s length as if the guy had some communicable disease—even negative identification with the protagonist is a lost cause. It tends to make the viewer mull less about what makes the him tick than wonder what’s possibly going on in Douglas’ mind.
Directed by David Levien and screenwriter Brian Koppelman, the team that also wrote the escort-service-love-for-hire mood piece The Girlfriend Experience, Solitary Man focuses in on the chaotic and crumbling daily life of Ben (Michael Douglas). He’s a former successful businessman making the cover of Forbes, whose high end car dealership was lost due to his own con games. And Ben has also just been handed a bombshell medical diagnosis: that he’s got a serious heart ailment.
Michael Douglas (L.) and Jesse Eisenberg in Solitary Man.
But Ben is too obsessed about his advancing age and inevitable loss of his male powers of seduction to care much about anything else, which is why he admonishes his adult daughter not to call him “dad” in public and instead pretend she’s his wife. And as his financial, legal and medical troubles mount, Ben emotionally compensates by applying his perfected career cons to pursuing increasingly younger women. That is, until the sexual danger junkie finds himself busted in front of his wealthy girlfriend (Mary-Louise Parker) by his latest sexual target, her teenage daughter Allyson (Imogen Poots).
Lacking income and any sympathy from his admonishing ex-wife (Susan Sarandon), Ben retreats to his former college town—where Allyson happens to be enrolled—and takes a job waiting tables in a local deli owned by an old friend, Jimmy (Danny DeVito). Jimmy happens to be designated as the most positive male role model in this movie, because he dispenses female advice like this to his impulsive pal: “Who needs all those women, they don’t stay the way they are. They put on pounds and wrinkles, and I’ve got one like that at home.” Nice.
And still unable to keep his voracious libido in check, Ben is soon turning campus party animal and making inappropriate advances on coeds. This while simultaneously dispensing unsolicited sex education of sorts, when not preying on the girlfriend of trusting vulnerable student, Daniel (Jesse Eisenberg).
Solitary Man suffers from being far too over the top in incessantly demonizing its protagonist, who excels in delivering speeches instead of emotional clarity, while at the same time providing no evidence as to Ben’s supposed irresistible powers over women. In reality, the main attraction for such women to over-the-hill men is money and/or fame, neither of which can be claimed by this character. It all results in a rather remotely conveyed story lacking any social or dramatic anchor in its surroundings. Solitary, indeed.
Who humans mate with and why they do is a complicated affair, with everyone from shrinks to anthropologists weighing in, which is why the simplistically conceived Solitary Man—about an aging womanizer—lacks the seductive skills to persuade any sincerity or raw truths, at least for this skeptical female critic.
