The whimsical dysfunctionality of mismatched family members feels like a specific artifact of the indies from two decades ago — back when I thought Eulogy was one of the funniest movies that no one’s heard of or would understand. In Brian Petsos’ directional debut Big Gold Brick, I’m reminded of the low-risk fear in exploring the dynamics between unconventional characters, all for the chance of an amused, raised eyebrow or offbeat laughs.
Samuel (Emory Cohen) is a writer whose all sorts of dishevelment — romantic, physical, spiritual — seem to worsen when he gets hit by a car and suffers a massive brain injury. He wakes up in a hospital with an apologetic driver named Floyd (Andy Garcia) standing by his bed. By the gift of cosmic alignment, Floyd learns that Samuel is a writer and enlists him to author his biography, letting him live at his house. There, Floyd’s family plays a role in the comedic wildness of Floyd’s life. There’s his lawyer/affair-seeking wife Jacqueline (Megan Fox), coke-addled violinist daughter Lily (Lucy Hale), and budding anarchic arsonist son Edward (Leonidas Castrounis). The women are leagues above Samuel’s seeming lack of conversational skills with the opposite sex, while he finds himself in Edward’s broody ways.
Petsos’ efforts in throwing these odd-shaped knicks at us may be admirable but, unfortunately, they don’t land the way that they should. Calling something a “cerebral comedy” can feel like a cop-out for ideas to come to life with the allowance to ease our suspension of belief. Due to Samuel’s brain injury, he starts to hallucinate things, which makes him probably the strangest one in the house. I don’t particularly care for the outer-realms-of-reality displays here, especially since the strongest part of the movie was Andy Garcia’s performance. His commitment to Floyd’s bizarre, borderline fraudulent yet earnest behavior makes me feel like even though Petsos’ vision didn’t come across clearly, Garcia had had to believe in something good about this film to make his character. I would have also placed Samuel in the backseat and allow the family to shine through, even if it’ll come across like a Jonathan Franzen paperback.
Big Gold Brick
2022
dir. Brian Petsos
132 mins
Available digitally and on VOD Friday, 2/25
