Brad's Status

Brad’s Status is a fucking nightmare, as though my butt shat out a turd, and that turd started patronizing me from the toilet bowl (or, on some nights, my neighbor’s planters--or one murky evening, the fireplace). The turd is saying, “You should be happy with me, I’m not such a bad turd. Coming from you, anyway. Settle.”

Brad’s Status is about a middle-aged man (Ben Stiller) with a hot wife (Jenna Fisher), a good job he created for himself, a nice house, a son (Austin Abrams) headed to Harvard, but he can’t sleep because his friends have even nicer shit. He wonders if he made the wrong choices in life, and begrudges those that did better. That should have been him! The movie’s target audience is people with the same anxieties, or who at least feel bad for Brad. In other words, that desirable demographic of whiny-ass middle-aged men who read magazines about shit they can never afford. Dudes who drive Camrys, but wish they had Avalons.

After much tossing and turning and a shitload of whiny voiceover, the movie reduces itself to the pat message that you should be thankful for what you have. Seriously. This is where this long and tortuous journey takes us. It’s like a “Family Circle” where Billy wanders the neighborhood only to end up right back at home, no wiser or funnier.

“Grateful for what you have” is a really fucking easy lesson to give to a character who has more than almost everyone else. Actually, it’s an easy message to give to anyone, except for one poor bastard. There is only one guy on this planet who has less than everyone else. And I bet he‘s covered in shit and flies and starving in Africa, under constant attack by guerrillas and gorillas. Or, he’s had to see Brad’s Status. Either way, nobody needs a movie about a bitter asshole to tell us to be thankful. 

Yet, some narcissistic and clueless faction of Hollywood thinks it’s their job to toss their wisdom from the ivory tower down to us. The Hollywood fucktards are once again telling us our lives look good enough from their vantage point way up high. “Hey, guys, stop complaining! The life you have that I wouldn’t want in a million years doesn’t look so bad.”

Grassfucking taintcrawlers.

The Brad in the movie’s title is Stiller’s character, a dad who takes his son Troy to Boston to check out elite colleges. This is not the story of a kid struggling to get into state college, or a somewhat decent school. It’s not about a kid and his dad clawing their way toward survival or slight improvement, like what most of us hope for. Nothing in this movie can be relatably modest because those grassfuckers in Hollywood don’t understand the common man, no matter how much they talk down to us.

No, Troy is getting into Harvard. But taking him to Boston brings up memories for Brad of his old college days and how his friends are all now comfortably in the economic top 1% in bland ways that remind us director-writer Mike White didn’t give it much thought: hedge fund, political operative, Silicon Valley guy, movie director. Of course, the 1%. A more complex and interesting movie would be about a character who is annoyed by even the tiniest advantages his friends have. That could be funnier, or at least more biting. This movie, though, is not trying to be clever. The little people don’t deserve clever and white is incapable of delivering.

Brad is a passive shithead. He complains a lot, in voiceover and on screen, but the most action he takes is to toss and turn in bed.  Oh, and the one scene where he has a tickle fight with his teenaged son. That was fucking weird; White and Stiller not only don’t get the middle class, they don’t even understand the dynamics of fathers and sons. Unless the movie wanted me to wonder if Brad was a weird-ass perv.

Ultimately, Brad explains his insecurities to a hot young coed (Shazi Raja) with wisdom beyond her years. She’s Deus Ex Machina, a cheesy device through which the writer-director exposits his message. She’s been poor, and she’s still young and idealistic, and she tells him to be grateful. Although by this time in the movie I was so damn sick of Brad complaining about how others are better off, the movie has her come right out and say it.

My question is this, are there really yuppies like Brad in the world? Is the real-life Brad the guy who stops in front of the TVs at Costco when golf is on just to practice his short game stroke? Is he the guy who takes his wife to shitstaurants like the Yardhouse or Maggiano’s to talk about a kitchen remodel for their anniversaries? Or is he the guy who buys driving gloves to eke every bit of performance out of his Buick Lucerne? Whoever he is, I swear to you he does not deserve to have movies made about them. It’s no good for anyone.

Movies should be escape and illumination. Movies are exaggerations of reality to make a point or story or joke. Good movies make good points, stories or jokes. Good movies exaggerate or emphasize what makes people interesting. Brad’s Status is not a good movie. It’s a fucking horrible, miserable patronizing slice of tossed off phony horseshit. Mike White started with a concept that he couldn’t see was trite and out of touch from way up high in the tower. He executed it with the sloppiest, easiest choices, and varnished the whole thing in misery, as though that is the same as tragedy. A movie about a nobody wanting more, from a filmmaker who thinks the world beyond his bubble is populated with nobodies (who are all comfortable upper middle class).

Fuck ‘em all. Brad’s a dick, and not even an interesting one. His plight ain’t my plight. His plight is that of a man who deserves less, not more. One Finger for Brad’s Status.