On the Rocks streaming on Apple TV now

(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) Five snouts up for On the Rocks written and directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Bill Murray, Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans streaming on Apple TV now. This movie is operating as a sort of time release capsule in my system. I thoroughly enjoyed the business of watching it; I laughed, smiled and frowned a lot. And in the days since I watched it, it is really sinking in how unusual this movie is.  Let me unpack this a bit for you.

From a mainstream Hollywood perspective, there is much to love.  This may well be the best Bill Murray since Groundhog Day.  This is classic Bill Murray as Felix the lifelong cad explaining how players work in way too much detail to his daughter Laura (Rashida Jones) a mother of two young girls with writer’s block living in Greenwich Village who is beginning to suspect that her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) is cheating on her.  Felix and his driver Musto (played by Musto Pelinkovicci) are at Laura’s disposal.  They begin to follow Dean.

Watching Bill Murray roll his eyes up to remember details of his lurid past (reminiscent of “me, also me, I am really close here” in the Groundhog Day diner), hop in a race car to zip around Manhattan, charm his way out of multiple awkward situations is absolutely reason alone to watch it.  Rashida Jones’ low key deadpan humor makes her the perfect foil to Murray. Their conversations, unusual for fathers and daughters, make us cringe which makes us laugh.

Here’s the time release capsule part: there’s a lot of other Hollywood tropes in this movie that seem predictable but turn out to be just teases.  It would be too much of a spoiler for me to detail them but some of them are so loud they scream a certain result to you and then that does not happen.  Wiser critics than I would probably be able to name other movies that work us this way, but I am at a loss to remember a film that more makes me think its a formula and turns out not to be. This film could only have been written and directed by a woman.

I will reveal, since its pretty obvious, that the main love relationship in this romantic comedy is between a father and a daughter not two lovers. That in and of itself is virtually unheard of.  Jones and Murray have a rhythm and screen chemistry that is subtle but brilliant to observe, not at all sexual but nonetheless palpable.   Since Sofia Coppola wrote and directed this film, one can’t help but wonder how much of her own relationship with her own powerful father Francis Ford Coppola makes it into this.  Regardless, this is a movie that has stayed with me and could turn into a classic.