Bill Murray has gone from Groundhog Day to Ghostbusters, from Kingpin to FDR and he’s been Lost in Translation some place in between….but in this, his best role to date, St. Vincent might get an Oscar nomination. A down on his luck, drunk, and with an overly mortgaged house…a day at the race tracks may be the only thing to save, Vincent. Until an unlikely occurrence… his neighbor (Melissa McCarthy) a newly divorced neighbor is blamed for hitting his fence with her moving truck. She promises to pay him back despite being a single mother with long hospital hours, and in the meantime, Vincent might just get stuck babysitting her son, Oliver (Jason Lieberher). But he’s not a “love thy neighbor” type. Instead, he just sees the babysitting as a way to make a quick $12 an hour for the track.
Murray has made a long career out of unpredictable films with unpredictable behavior. But one thing that’s certain in his 40-plus year career, is his laissez faire attitude. And it’s on full throttle here. Naomi Watts does a wonderful job stepping into the shoes of Vincent’s Russian pregnant girlfriend. Chris O’Dowd rounds out the cast as Oliver’s school teacher aka Father Geharty who lectures about real life saints.
The film isn’t the comedy you might expect by teaming Murray and McCarthy. Instead, it plays out more like About A Boy as a young child learns about life through a sad old man and a sad old man learns from a boy. But it’s also about the life stories kept secret, the secrets of our soul. Even McCarthy becomes more a realistic human or perhaps a bit of a saint, performing more than her usual toilet humor gags.
Early on you might see where the film is headed, but somehow we don’t mind the sensitive journey. 4 tiaras