We made it an evening of favorite comedies on Saturday night. We'd already queued up Step Brothers, noting it had been a while since we'd last seen it (2015), and then had time for another short one afterwards. Turns out, it had been a lot longer since we'd last seen Flirting With Disaster: 2009.The choice of the second movie was certainly influenced by the first. As I was going through the folder of DVDs I brought with me from America, I landed on Flirting because a) we wanted to keep the comedy vibe going, and b) it would allow for a double feature of movies featuring the great comedic actor Richard Jenkins. Or, Richard E. Jenkins, as he was once credited.
Not only did this make a great 1-2 punch of exasperation and perfect line deliveries, it also made an unexpected two-movie exploration of families constructed, reconstructed and deconstructed in unusual ways.
In Step Brothers, of course, you've got a new family unit that is composed of two sixtysomething adults (Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen) and their two adult children who still live with them (Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly). The parents are both successes in their respective fields and the kids have no fields at all, yet we are invited to try to see the similarities between them that would make them legitimately related. Ferrell's gentler nature mirrors that of his mother, whom he describes as a saint, though not his asshole brother (Adam Scott), who must have taken more after their dad. Meanwhile, we finally see the relationship between Reilly and Jenkins bear fruit at the end, when Jenkins explains that he always wanted to be a dinosaur, even in his late teenage years. It explains some of the fantasy focus of the adult Reilly.
In Flirting With Disaster, we've got Ben Stiller's character desperately seeking to belong to biological parents, to see in them traits that he has. With each misstep they make on their journey, it takes usually less than an hour to determine the person he's meeting is not actually related to him, but by that point he has already identified apparent physical and behavioral similarities to the people he's meeting -- kind of like how you can read yourself into any horoscope if you squint hard enough. His potentially rivalrous relationship with his own previously unknown brother (Glenn Fitzgerald) is explored, and we see Stiller in all manner of possible family dynamics. Then of course there is also the unconventional family of Jenkins' character with his husband, played by Josh Brolin.
The common factor is Jenkins, but I'm not going to posit any kind of match between actor and subject matter. It's surely just a coincidence.
What isn't a coincidence is how great Jenkins is in both films. Neither part is a lead role, though he does have plenty of screen time. But he's got the presence and the comic instincts to steal scenes from those he does appear alongside. His apoplectic rage at the step brothers is comic gold, and his reaction to getting dosed with acid after eating the wrong quail in Flirting With Disaster is legendary. "Is this a musical table?" "Good night Tina!"
His delivery is, of course, first rate, as he can put a cynical spin on a line of dialogue with the best of them. But this time around I took particular note of the work he does with his face. His look of absolute adoration as he takes in the bullshit slung by his new stepson, the asshole brother Derek, is just hilarious. He's a sixtysomething man glowing with a school girl crush. It's a variation on that same look that is so great when he wishes Tina good night in the middle of his acid trip. This is a first-time experience as well, and for this moment at least, it's a good one.
As Jenkins is now 73 and hasn't appeared in a film since The Shape of Water, I worry that there will be a paucity of future Jenkins roles for me to appreciate the way I appreciate these two. Then again, he's in two 2020 movies that have yet to release. Miranda July's Kajillionaire, at least, seems like it has the potential for Jenkins to again wrestle with the absurdities of life the way only he can.
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