Greenberg
by MEL CAMPBELL
  • WATCH THE TRAILER

    Here

  • WHAT

    Greenberg

  • WIN

    Thanks to Universal, we have 5 dbls to give away! To enter, email win@twothousand.com.au with the subject 'I should be with a divorced 38-year-old who has teenage sons and low expectations about life'

  • WHERE

    In cinemas from Jul 22

published on 21st July, 2010

I have soft spot for Noah Baumbach as he directed one of my favourite 90s-era films Kicking and Screaming all about brilliantly articulate (read quotable) downwardly mobile 20-somethings. Greenberg, Baumbach’s latest, is almost like Kicking and Screaming for 40-somethings: a rom-com that’s acerbic, funny and endlessly quotable.

Roger Greenberg (played brilliantly by Ben Stiller) is a 40-something carpenter (former 20-something musician) who, after a mini mental breakdown, returns to his home town of LA via 15 years in NYC to house sit for his more stable and successful brother. He reconnects with the people he left behind and half-heartedly woos his brother’s PA Florence, played with awkward charm by Greta Gerwig (she of mumblecore fame).

Greenberg is one of those guys whose life just didn’t turn out how he planned. Instead of coming to terms with this, he obsesses about his almost-made-it past and the fledgling romance that he is simultaneously trying to destroy. All this to avoid coming to terms with being old(er) and not ‘having it all’ (aka career, spouse and spawn). Greenberg doesn’t spell death to rom-coms but it does show that they can have a darker (or more realistic) side too.

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