ON THE ROCKS may skate over deeper concerns and anxieties of Rashida Jones’ character but Sofia Coppola’s enchanting film never skips a beat in entertaining plot and patter.
Bill Murray is Felix, a loquacious lothario, liberal with libations, a social lubricant incarnate.Laura (Rashida Jones) is his daughter, and thinks she’s happily hitched, but when her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) starts logging late hours at
the office with a new co-worker, Laura begins to fear the worst.
Being a man of his gender and era, Felix fuels her fears of infidelity and insists they investigate the situation. So begins a screwball adventure as father and daughter sleuth her spouse interspersing their surveillance with comfort stops at a series of New York bars and eateries.
Felix’s cavalier cheekiness is double-sided; charming and sophisticated at best, a mortifyingly awkward sexist, misogynist dinosaur at worst. What child, probably more so a daughter, has not cringed at parental inappropriateness, most probably a father flirting, trowelling on the smarm and raising the barometer of embarrassment?
There’s a fine line between chivalry and chauvinism and perceptions between the proscribed and prescribed are blurred. Laura can roll her eyes at her father’s outmoded way of life, but the offer to join him in a delirious chase is also a chance to recharge.
Felix’s thirst for every drop of life is intoxicating, utterly uninhibited, and totally endearing. He’s a lovable rogue with a twist of melancholy, not quite understanding the potentially pernicious crossing of the parameters of parental protectiveness.
Frothy fun, ON THE ROCKS is a sparkling generational comedy, with a champagne script and caviar performances from Murray and Jones.
ON THE ROCKS will be screening at Palace Cinemas (excluding Victoria) nationally from October 2 and will be on Apple TV+ from October 23.
