Sofia Coppola's ON THE ROCKS

Sofia Coppola's ON THE ROCKS is a gentle look at a marriage that might be in trouble. It runs a regular 90 minutes (it always feels like a relief when a movie promises a running time of one and a half hours), though in truth its story could have been told in 65.

Rashida Jones plays a woman, married with two children, who starts to doubt her husband is being faithful. She confides in her father, played by Bill Murray, who takes it upon himself to help Rashida investigate the fear and save his daughter from her life, because she used to be much more fun.

Aside from the creeping fear - played extremely well by Jones - of her husband's infidelity, the wife goes through a series of low-key adventures with her father, which have no repercussions whatsoever on her. 

The trouble is the film is really about affluent white privilege in New York city. It feels out-of-time, and is tone deaf to the politics of change of the past few years. It reveals Sofia Coppola as inured from real life, still living in a twinkling lights Allenesque New York City of yore, where rich white people have dinner parties in beautiful apartments with genuine Monets and Twomblys on the wall, and where, when the cops pull you over for running a red light, you can talk your way out of it because pops knew the cop's father and grandfather, and can ask about the family and if any kids are on their way.

The poor wife only has two beautiful children to contend with, an army of nannies / carers ready to pop over any time she wants to go out with her father, and a novel to have to write. Oh, boy.

I had some fun wondering how much of the Murray character was based on father Francis, and I enjoyed how the film works as a companion to LOST IN TRANSLATION.

I do wonder, though, how long Murray can go on deadpanning his way through his career, trading on his schtick. As much as I love him, when the screenplay isn't there, the deadpan just looks... well, dead. Sorry. 

Rashida Jones comes out of it well; and Marlon Wayans as her husband plays his single note of handsome lovability just right. There are one or two life-lesson moments... but there ought to have been more. One doesn't doubt the depth of anguish felt by the wife, but a richer film might have been made if it had been alert to the world rather than looking like a commercial reflecting the desire for an unobtainable lifestyle.

ON THE ROCKS is available as an Apple Original Film on Apple TV+