Brad’s Status (2017)

Smith’s Verdict: ***

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

Get over yourself, Ben Stiller—er, I mean, Brad. Quit complaining about everything and shut the hell up, Ben—er, Brad.

I think Brad Sloan in Mike White’s “Brad’s Status” is the perfect role for Ben Stiller. In “The Meyerowitz Stories,” “While We’re Young,” “Greenberg,” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” and even the “Night at the Museum” movies, among others, we’ve noticed in the past decade just how good Stiller is at playing a neurotic who is hardly satisfied with where he is at his point in life. Stiller has played self-centered, passive-aggressive, humorously unhappy men who are hard to like but even harder to hate. And now we have “Brad’s Status,” which is probably the most aware of Stiller’s trademark niche.

He plays Brad Sloan—is it even a shock to describe him as bitter and resentful from the get-go? When we first meet him, he’s lying awake in bed, sharing his inner monologue with us about how great his old friends have it—Craig (Michael Sheen) is a best-selling author; Billy (Jermaine Clement) is now retired and living in Maui, having sold his company; Jason (Luke Wilson) is a filthy-rich CEO; and Nick (Mike White) is a Hollywood director. What about Brad? He runs his own non-profit organization and lives a nice life with his loving wife Melanie (Jenna Fischer) and musically-talented 17-year-old son Troy (Austin Abrams)… Thank God when Brad wakes up Melanie and starts groaning about money, she’s there to tell him not to compare themselves to the wealthy, because somebody had to tell this guy he has a good status. But the movie continues (that’s only the first few minutes), and we haven’t heard the last of his complaining…

Brad takes Troy on a cross-country plane trip to visit colleges. Wanting the best for his son, while at the same time worrying that he’ll be as resentful towards him as he is towards his wealthy friends, Brad commits a series of mistakes he hopes to make up for by getting him an interview with the Harvard dean of admissions. Along the way, he has so many encounters with people that should wake him up to be okay with his current status, including a sour dinner date with Craig and, my personal favorite, a failed attempt to get a co-ed, an Indian-American music student named Ananya (Shazi Raja), to see things his way. (She drops the hammer on him, stating he has white man’s privilege, while she knows kids in India who are lucky to have something to eat.)

All of this sounds like I’m criticizing the film, but I’m not. I’m actually recommending it. I imagine everyone at some point or another tries to compare their lives with the lives of everyone they know—are they doing better than some, worse than others? And it never seems to be good enough. But the point of “Brad’s Status,” in which the main character has a midlife crisis, is that this feeling does exist. And it passes. The ending is ambiguous, but there is a ray of hope that Brad will be fine with his status.

A lot of reviews for “Brad’s Status” has praised the music score by Mark Mothersbaugh, a discordant score with a lot of staccato strings. And for good reason—it’s the perfect score to accompany a 40something year old man who is full of regret and constantly thinks about where he would be today if he just did things different. It’s usually there over Brad’s voiceover narration, which makes it all the more effective.

With the aid of White’s insightful screenplay (and directing), Stiller nails the role. Sometimes, he’s frustrating to watch (to the point where I want to look away), but even so, he’s always convincing and it’s not too difficult to understand why he thinks this way throughout the film. He is what makes “Brad’s Status” an important study in how to cope with a nervous breakdown. This guy may not be easy to like, but just remember—this could be us some day.