Brad’s Sta­tus

Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller) should be hap­py. He has a good job, a nice home, a lov­ing wife and a son on the verge of going to Har­vard. He is com­fort­able. So why does Brad’s Sta­tus open with its pro­tag­o­nist lying awake at night, con­sumed by a gnaw­ing sense that his life has gone wrong some­where along the road? Brad’s prob­lem is envy, pro­voked and exac­er­bat­ed by the fact that his con­tem­po­raries from col­lege have all gone on to achieve ridicu­lous lev­els of wealth and fame, leav­ing him feel­ing like an out­sider with his nose pressed up against the glass.

Much of Brad’s Sta­tus takes place dur­ing a trip to Boston, where Brad’s son Troy (Austin Abrams) has a cou­ple of col­lege inter­views sched­uled. While he is ini­tial­ly excit­ed to have this pre­cious time togeth­er with his off­spring before he leaves the nest, his inse­cu­ri­ties threat­en to scup­per every­thing. He can’t go five min­utes with­out let­ting his mind wan­der into a fan­ta­sy of what his life might have been like. What if he hadn’t been so quick to set­tle? What if he had tak­en more chances? Couldn’t it have been Brad frol­ick­ing on the beach with two biki­ni-clad beau­ties whose com­bined ages don’t match his own? Or get­ting away from it all on his own pri­vate jet? What if… what if…

In many ways Brad’s Sta­tus is a more effec­tive Wal­ter Mit­ty movie than the overblown boon­dog­gle Stiller direct­ed in 2013, but writer/​director Mike White is walk­ing a far more dif­fi­cult tightrope. By align­ing us with Brad’s embit­tered point-of-view, he’s leav­ing him­self open to accu­sa­tions of indulging the whiny navel-gaz­ing of a mid­dle-aged white man, beset by first-world prob­lems. Cru­cial­ly, White does give us some alter­na­tive per­spec­tives, pri­mar­i­ly through the bewil­dered Troy – who fears his father is on the brink of a ner­vous break­down – and Troy’s friend Ananya (the scene-steal­ing Shazi Raja), a tal­ent­ed stu­dent and musi­cian who becomes the unfor­tu­nate recip­i­ent of Brad’s self-pity­ing spiel. ​“You’re 50 years old and you still think the world was made for you,” she mar­vels, punc­tur­ing his blink­ered sense of enti­tle­ment. ​“Just don’t ask me to feel bad for you. You’re doing fine. Trust me. You have enough.”

Mike White isn’t inter­est­ed in val­i­dat­ing Brad or tear­ing him down; the film is sim­ply about his grad­ual real­i­sa­tion that, yes, he does have enough, and the grass is not always green­er on the oth­er side. That oth­er side is rep­re­sent­ed by a few choice cameos (a fraz­zled Luke Wil­son and a won­der­ful­ly super­cil­ious Michael Sheen), but Brad’s Sta­tus is Stiller’s movie, with the actor deliv­er­ing one of his most impres­sive per­for­mances. Stiller has played many of these neu­rot­ic, man-on-the-edge roles over the years, but here it is aug­ment­ed by a nuanced char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and a depth of emo­tion that is gen­uine­ly affect­ing; he even gives us a close-up rem­i­nis­cent of Nicole Kid­man in Jonathan Glazer’s Birth.

Whether audi­ences will still be invest­ed in Brad’s jour­ney when he has this moment of epiphany is an open ques­tion. He’s cer­tain­ly not an easy guy to spend time with, and many of White’s per­fect­ly pitched scenes of social embar­rass­ment are ago­nis­ing to watch. For those who stick with it, how­ev­er, Brad’s Sta­tus is an unusu­al­ly thought-pro­vok­ing and reward­ing comedy.