Top

I Melt With You

February 20, 2012 by · Comments Off on I Melt With You 

I Melt With You, What happens when you can’t turn back time and can’t accept it?
There is a reason why it’s best to avoid reunions. Some people don’t change, others change too much, and promises made in our younger days comes back to bite us. Having old friends from back in the day is a wonderful thing. The only problem is when you all evolve or devolve and are no longer good for one another. Once you hit 35 reunions begin to have a somber note. We are reminded how young were were, how time is no longer on our side, and what dreams may never come true. In I Melt With You, four old college male friends turn their annual week long get together into one big middle aged mess.

This theme of lost dreams and the unexamined life was a hit with The Big Chill back in the 1980s when Glenn Close was a 30-something instead of a cross dressing 50-something character in Albert Nobbs. With I Melt With You it’s the Gen-X version of post-millennium nihilism. Coming of age in the 1990s has a very dark side, it’s called being vacuous and staid and starring in this film.

Men’s movies are a peculiar thing. They either work very well or turn into a bad version of The Hangover. It’s the later here despite having Thomas Jane, Jeremy Priven, Christian McKay, and aging pretty boy Rob Lowe. The fellas drink their broody feelings away hoping to wake up 18 again. Each actor plays a caricature in a forgettable way. Jane is the mid-life crisis suffering English teacher, Lowe peddles pills to menopausal women, Priven plays a template Wall Street executive with a picture perfect family, and McKay is just depressed as like any frustrated sensitive without a channel for his dark moods. If male menopause had a face and a film, then its I Melt With You. We really need to get over the 80s.

Bottom