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| Wiig and Hader get serious in The Skeleton Twins. |
««« The
Skeleton Twins. Written by Mark Heyman & Craig Johnson. Directed by
Craig Johnson. At selected theaters.
Craig Johnson's The Skeleton Twins sounds like a Tim
Burton movie, but it isn't. It stars Saturday
Night Live alumni Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, but it isn't an overblown
skit like A Night at the Roxbury or Austin Powers. Here's what it is: a spare,
well-wrought drama about a pair of mismatched siblings who happen to be
indispensible to each other. Insofar as it's about a couple of damaged people
trying to find a way forward, it's much like Silver Linings Playbook—except without that film's "love
conquers madness" magical thinking. Depending on your inclination, you can
take it either as an amusing movie about depression, or a grim kind of comedy.
Wiig and Hader are Maggie and Milo, twins who parted in
mutual distaste a decade earlier. When Milo attempts suicide after a bad
breakup, the equally glum Maggie plays the dutiful sister, inviting him to
recuperate with her. More out of embarrassment as need, Milo accepts. Of
course, by inviting her brother into her house Maggie is also inviting the
past, which inevitably up-ends the rapport they forgot they shared.
It should come as no surprise that sketch comics like Wiig
and Hader are capable of delivering plausible, touching performances. They were
part of the strongest SNL casts in
the last decade or two, and anybody who can wring laughs out of the
occasionally paper-thin writing on that show has to be talented.
True, there's an element of waiting for the punch-line
here—the suspicion that Wiig must inevitably come forth wearing doll baby arms,
and Hader lapse back into playing "Stefon". It's an inevitable risk
when any of Lorne Michaels' crew attempts a dramatic role. (Everybody remembers
the lonely Bill Murray of Lost in
Translation, but what about enlightenment-seeking Bill Murray in 1984's The Razor's Edge?) Newcomer Craig
Johnson keeps a lid on Wiig and Hader's broader antics, but lets them off the
leash enough to let laughs become the currency of their relationship. It's a
real accomplishment that he found the right balance.
This film has come while many are still puzzling over
the suicide of Robin Williams. That such a wrenching contradiction is
possible—that a man with such irrepressible instincts to amuse others could be
so inwardly miserable—came as a surprise to many of us. But as The Skeleton Twins shows, while laughter
can be part of happiness, it can never be the entirety. "Laughing until it
hurts" is a cliché, but laughing because
it hurts is close to the truth.
That said, this writer will be looking forward to the
deleted scenes on this movie's DVD edition. We can only hope Wiig didn't forget
the baby arms there.
©
2014 Nicholas Nicastro
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