About Alex (2014)

About Alex (2014) is about an estranged group of college friends that get together years after school when one of them attempts suicide and fails. It has a great ensemble cast of people that I've seen but weren't sure if they were great. Gladly every actor and actress was fantastic Aubrey Plaza (whom I love) is great, Maggie Grace, Jason Ritter, Nate Parker, and (my favorite) Max Greenfield among others. I love the characters and the banter along with the history of them that slowly unfolds through the drama and romance. About Alex is an amazing dramedy. Check it out on Netflix 9.5/10.

Alex (Jason Ritter) attempts to kill himself in his family home. His college friends gather to visit him. Ben (Nate Parker) and Siri (Maggie Grace) are married and facing difficult issues. Josh (Max Greenfield) is the malcontent who wants to confront Alex about his suicide attempt. Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) is tired of her job. Isaac (Max Minghella) brings his young girlfriend Kate (Jane Levy) who used to work for him.This is basically a reworking of The Big Chill with some interesting actors from the new generation. I really don't want take away points for copying by new filmmaker Jesse Zwick. The biggest change is the lack of popular music. Nobody is dancing with their breakfast in this one. The best aspect is someone like Plaza stretching out a little. She shows that she can be a very compelling dramatic actress. This has some of my favorite actors around in a familiar movie setting.

The worst thing about About Alex is that it's not interesting. The film is pretty much like any other drama dealing with this sort of mid- young life crisis scenario. The film looks great and is fairly well acted. The script is unimaginative and cringe inducing, but it's now worse that what one encounters on TV dramas when Things Get Serious. If you're looking for a mindless drama full of good looking people, sets, and locations About Alex would be an OK choice.The characters are all clichés and particularly seem to be the sort of people a young writer trying to be serious comes up with. The characters are mostly horrible people, the sort you enjoy seeing die in a slasher film. (Spoiler alert: That sadly doesn't happen.)The most interesting character is Alex, the guy whose attempted suicide is the catalyst for the story (though "story" is a bit of a stretch). Watching Alex's self centered, shallow friends complain and posture made me wonder if he'd had better friends would Alex have ever been in a suicidal state.

This movie, About Alex, is such a copy/rip-off of The Big Chill, I honestly don't know how the Screen Writers Guild allows Jesse Zwick to pass this off as an original screenplay. Obviously, he changed the characters and dialog to update to the 21st century, but he has stolen outright so many elements from The Big Chill that there should at least be an acknowledgment, "Based on the Motion Picture..." like there are on other movies that rework original ideas for modern movies (e.g. The Evil Dead).In The Big Chill, the character who commits suicide and inspires the reunion is Alex; in this version, there is also a suicidal character named Alex, though he is unsuccessful in his suicide. One of the characters in About Alex has a younger girlfriend not originally part of the group and she feels awkward around the others - there is a similar character in The Big Chill. Two of the characters hook up after many years, there is an obligatory dance sequence, a pot smoking scene, etc. All of this is straight out of The Big Chill.At one point in About Alex, Aubrey Plaza says something to the effect of "This is like one of those movies in the 80s...". I've seen this same contrivance in other movies used as some sort of way to excuse the fact that the filmmakers have borrowed heavily from an earlier work, but personally I don't believe this is a way out from plagiarism. I know people like to quote, "plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery," but is is still plagiarism.Maybe this would have been somewhat excusable if writer/director Zwick actually had something interesting to say and was able to formulate a movie that actually spoke to people. But instead, he just goes through the predictable motions of creating characters that are so redundant that they are now virtually stereotypes (the suicidal aspiring actor, the blocked writer, etc.) and having them speak a lot of trite "socially pertinent" conversation. I get the impression Zwick just made a list of all the so-called relevant issues of today's 20/30-somethings - e.g. technology, anti-depressants, lack of good pop music - and then planned his scenes accordingly. The end result is a script that is lazy and tepid and does nothing to stand out from all the other movies dealing with these same issues.