On paper, The Glass Castle is something to get excited about. It marks the reunion of Brie Larson and Destin Daniel Cretton, the star and director of 2013’s Short Term 12 — a mini indie masterpiece that should jump ahead of everything on your must-watch list if you’ve never seen it. And the source material, American journalist Jeannette Walls’ memoir about growing up in an eccentric ’70s family, suggests the kind of interesting character dynamics that made Larson and Cretton’s first film together so great. Sadly, The Glass Castle doesn’t totally deliver on its pedigree, an exasperating confection of great performances, meandering scenes, sweet moments, off-the-peg characers and a resolution that is at once trite yet affecting.
It could have been so much more.
Put simply, The Glass Castle is Captain Fantastic without the laughs. The film flits between the ’80s with Larson as successful gossip writer Walls — we know it’s the ’80s because her hair is huge — living with a Totally Wrong Fiancé (Max Greenfield) and her unconventional ’70s upbringing with nomadic parents, drunken dreamer Rex (Woody Harrelson) and artist Rose Mary (Naomi Watts). As the family — Walls has three siblings — move from town to town, warm moments (a lovely scene with Rex and Jeannette stargazing) butt up against harrowing vignettes (Rex teaching Jeannette to swim by just lobbing her around a swimming pool) in scenes that feel repetitive and don’t move the action on.
Surprisingly, given the nuance in Short Term 12, Cretton is unable to find any telling details or insight in any of this; instead there is more of a TV movie feel. This also feeds into his filmmaking, which save a couple of uses of slow motion and a raw handheld camera in a fight scene, is unobtrusive but bland. Where he does shine, though, is with his cast. Harrelson gives Rex intelligence and a befuddled kind of menace but with enough turn-on-a-dime charm that makes you believe the family would stay together. Watts, too, registers as an artsy Earth mother type but has real bite in a confrontation with her grown-up daughter over noodles. Larson is good, but the flashback structure doesn’t really give her enough to sink her teeth into — it’s a bit like watching a Formula 1 car never getting out of first gear. It’s just as well, then, that Chandler Head and Ella Anderson, playing six-year-old and tween Jeannette respectively, are terrific, playing difficult scenes without being too saccharine or movie-kid wise.
By the time the two story strands come together — late teens Jeannette (now played by Larson) resolves to strike out on her own; super successful Jeannette reconnects with her parents living rough in New York — the resolution feels forced, convenient and predictable. But, even forced, convenient and predictable can move you when you have great actors. It just could have been so much more.
