About Alex (2014)

"About Alex" directed by Jessie Zwick.

The unexpected suicide of a friend named Alex was the impetus for bringing together a group of college buddies in the 1983 drama “The Big Chill.” Though the suicide is only an attempt this time, the formula gets revisited in writer-director Jessie Zwick's “About Alex,” a talky but dull wannabe examination of contemporary twenty-something malaise.

Just released from the hospital, Alex (Jason Ritter) returns to his cozy childhood home in a wooded, rural part of upstate New York with his wrists bandaged and blood still splattered in the bathroom where his botched attempt at his own life took place. Several former college cronies, many with problems of their own, collect for a weekend of sometimes harmless, sometimes awkward reminiscing complete with eating, drinking, plenty of pot smoking, and of course, the predictable, angry third-act quarrel that results in an accident.

There’s the anguished Ben (Nate Parker), a newspaperman and novelist stuck in a yearlong writer’s block; Siri (Maggie Grace), Ben’s anguished wife who just got offered a dream job in L.A. but isn’t sure Ben wants to go and also thinks she might be pregnant; unhappy Sarah (Aubrey Plaza), a single and dissatisfied tax-attorney with mildly self-destructive sexual urges; bitter Josh (Max Greenfield), a pseudo-intellectual who indulges Sarah in noisy moments of mindless, escapist sex; ambivalent Isaac (Max Minghella), Sarah’s former crush turned right-wing businessman; and likable Kate (Jane Levy), Isaac’s current girlfriend, a rep for a suicide hotline (what are the odds?) and the lone stranger to the group.

“About Alex” seems to aspire to be a glimpse of challenges faced by today’s millennials, but the conversations struggle to rise in depth above anything more important than petty jealousies and relationship scuttlebutt. The closest the film comes to social relevance is a short exchange about the ways social media seems to keep people apart rather than bringing them closer.

Saddled with superficial material, the actors do what they can to stand out. Max Greenfield is convincing as the cynical curmudgeon decrying the current state of things and Jane Levy is endearing as the pretty but emotionally vulnerable outsider. However, the usually deadpan Aubrey Plaza, with her trademark baleful eyes, seems miscast in a lighter, chirpier role.