Lorene Scafaria’s feature film, The Meddler, is burdened with a misleading title. One might assume it’s about an unpleasant person who makes other people uneasy or miserable, but it’s actually about a guileless and needy widow with a sunny disposition whose chief ambition is to help her fellow human beings.
Marnie (Susan Sarandon), still grieving over the death of her beloved husband, has moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles to ward off loneliness and be close to her daughter, Lori (Rose Byrne), a screenwriter whose marriage has fallen apart.
As beautifully played by Sarandon, Marnie is as devoted and caring as a mother can be. But she doesn’t realize there’s a thin line between devotion and intrusion. Marnie arrives at Lori’s house bearing a bag of fresh bagels, but she needlessly upsets Lori by reminding her, ever so gently, of her minor shortcomings.
Being a philanthropic person, Marnie’s motives are pure and pristine. Nevertheless, she’s getting under Lori’s skin. The unpalatable truth is that Marnie is a motormouth and a busybody. Perhaps, as her therapist observes in a moment of clarity, she’s possessed by a desperate yearning to feel needed. It’s a function she performed admirably during her marriage, but now that her husband is dead and buried, Marnie needs a surrogate, so to speak.
Working within the framework of this imperative, Marnie obsessively bombards Lori with phone calls and text messages. Lori, whose husband recently left her for another woman, prefers less contact. In modern parlance, Lori needs her space. Boundaries must be drawn, she says, much to Marnie’s disappointment.
Having understood Lori’s message, Marnie adapts to the circumstances. She flits from one venue to the next, filling her spare time as best she can. She visits an Apple store for a quick lesson on how to use an iPhone. She drops by at a pre-wedding party. And without missing a beat, she accidentally wanders on to a movie set.
But for a do-gooder like Marnie, life offers yet more opportunities to be helpful. In quick succession, she volunteers to babysit, to drive a student to his night classes and to pay for a wedding. She can afford to be generous, her late spouse having left her a substantial inheritance.
Marnie, however, seems disinterested in acquiring the company of the opposite sex. She shares a few laughs with an eligible man from her old neighborhood in Brooklyn, but the encounter is strictly platonic. As they chat, the dialogue grows embarrassingly clunky. “Have you been to the Holocaust museum?” he asks incongruously. “It sounds like fun,” she replies mindlessly.
In the romance department, Marnie has far better luck with Randy Zipper (J.K. Simmonds), a tall, gnarled ex-cop who raises chickens to the sound of music, drives a sleek Harley-Davidson motorcycle and plays a guitar. Zipper, a cross between a cowboy and an aging rock star, is perfectly portrayed by Simmonds.
The Meddler, which opens in Canada on May 6, is a drama laced with comedic touches. It moves along at a brisk pace and proves to be quite entertaining in places, but it’s little more than celluloid cotton candy.