‘On The Rocks’ Review: Bill Murray Reunites With Sofia Coppola For A Sparkling Father-Daughter Caper [NYFF 2020]
By Hoai-Tran Bui/Sept. 24, 2020 9:00 am EST
Is it possible to be so nostalgic for a pre-COVID New York? Shots of the lit-up city skyline and the bustling Manhattan streets in the late hours of the evening made me almost weep with yearning. Perhaps it’s the timing of its release that makes On the Rocks feel so passionately like a love letter to New York City, to a time when you could brood alone in an uptown bar with a cocktail in hand. Laura and Felix spend most of the movie’s runtime wandering these never-empty streets in fine dining outfits, Murray especially looking sharp in a multitude of tailored suits, and it turns the city into a kind of dreamscape that feels neither like the New York of now or even the one of then. It’s a bubble that gently lifts you up, and that might be in danger of popping, but thankfully never does.
Laura lives the kind of ideal New York City life that you see in the movies: she has a sleek, modern Manhattan apartment, albeit one littered with toys, a loving career-driven husband, a downstairs neighbor who will drop everything to babysit her kids when her father suddenly drops in to take her out on the town. But Laura (a wonderfully grounded and relatable Jones) feels something amiss: her husband, whose attention always seems to be somewhere else, has returned from a business trip with a woman’s toiletry bag in his suitcase. After one worried call with her father, Felix immediately jumps on the case, calling on friends to tail her husband and taking Laura out on late-night capers in his obnoxiously noticeable red car. But Murray is oozing so much charisma that it’s impossible not to be charmed by all of his little quirks and his deep and unrelenting love for his daughter.
Both Coppola and Jones probably know something about coming from complicated fathers, and there is a feeling of the personal that slips in when the film transforms from a hangout movie into an intense dressing down of Felix’s whimsical persona. Murray and Jones are tremendous in the confrontation when Laura finally breaks and asks her father, “Why did you cheat?” Felix’s face falls and you finally see the little cracks, the years of regrets catching up on him before the mask is put back in place and deflects yet again: he just wanted to be loved. “It’s exhausting to try to love you enough,” Laura responds.
On the Rocks isn’t Coppola’s most momentous film — it’s a little too frothy, all crackle and no pop — but its near lackadaisical tone and a delightful Murray performance make it an entertaining watch. It goes down like a smooth glass of wine, with perhaps a little bit of tartness./Film Rating: 7 out of 10
