Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks is a gently funny father-daughter comedy carried by Bill Murray and Rashida Jones. The marriage troubles feel underwritten, but the affection and irritation between these two are worth spending an evening with.
Sofia Coppola makes a good, modest comedy out of the difficulty of having a father who is entertaining enough to get away with being a nuisance. On the Rocks is worth an evening for its family friction, though the troubled marriage generates little suspense. Its particular pleasure is watching a grown daughter try to decide how much weight to give a man who has never had trouble being heard. The jokes have a recognisable cost to the person listening.
Laura, played by Rashida Jones, is a writer and mother whose doubts about her marriage arrive alongside a dwindling sense of time for herself. The performance catches the fatigue of listening politely when there is already too much to do. Beside Bill Murray’s Felix, she makes exasperation funny without reducing Laura to a dutiful straight woman. Her affection for her father helps explain why his opinions are difficult to dismiss.
Bill Murray gives Felix the ease of someone who expects each conversation to go his way, and usually has reason to. We laughed at his certainty, then felt irritated on Laura’s behalf. His advice carries the pleasure of having an audience, and Rashida Jones makes the effort of indulging him visible. The discomfort is that we can understand why she keeps listening. Sofia Coppola allows his charm to work on us without treating it as proof that he knows anything.
Philippe Le Sourd’s cinematography gives Manhattan a soft, hazy beauty that encourages us to settle into the film’s unhurried company. Anne Ross’s production design makes material comfort an ordinary part of these people’s lives, and the lack of fuss feels right. Laura’s unhappiness is not made ridiculous simply because her surroundings are enviable. The film takes her dissatisfaction seriously without pretending that she has no advantages.
Sarah Flack’s editing gives the exchanges enough room for impatience to register, and avoids trying to manufacture urgency the story cannot support. The music by Laurent Brancowitz, Christian Mazzalai, Thomas Mars and Deck d’Arcy keeps the tone light without insisting on each joke. Neither the cutting nor the music presses us to treat every marital worry as a major crisis. That restraint is welcome, although it cannot supply the tension missing from the writing.
The weaker material concerns the marriage itself. Sofia Coppola’s screenplay understands the fatigue of parenthood, but gives Laura’s life away from Felix too little weight for her doubts to trouble us much. Giving him so much of the entertaining material risks leaving us as impatient to get back to him as the film appears to be. Rashida Jones does enough to keep Laura from disappearing, though the script gives us too few chances to see what her work means to her.
As a relationship comedy, On the Rocks benefits from allowing people to be irritating without making them impossible to love. The believable affection between the leads goes a long way towards keeping the familiar material alive. We would have welcomed a little more room for Laura to exist beyond her responses to Felix. Choose it when a gently aggravating parent sounds like entertaining company.
