USA Today: "Welcome to the Rileys" is poignant but uneven
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
After all those years playing Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini knows his way around a stripper pole.
In Welcome to the Rileys, Gandolfini plays Doug Riley, a plumbing contractor who slips out of a New Orleans convention and pops into a seedy strip club. But this is no Bada Bing, and Doug is not there for a joy ride.
Like Tony, Doug is an emotionally shattered guy who has kept secrets from his wife (Melissa Leo). He also is a take-charge fixer, but not the kind who breaks kneecaps or orders hits.
In a way that happens only in the movies, Doug takes Mallory (Kristen Stewart), a 16-year-old stripper/hooker, under his wing. He sees in her a vague resemblance to the teenage daughter he lost in a tragic accident.
Doug repairs her filthy apartment, paying her for the privilege, and instructs Mallory to clean up her act, including fining her for every F-bomb she drops.
But Doug is no smug Henry Higgins, transforming a tough-talking urchin into a princess. He's a man trying desperately to outrun grief. Resisting her carnal overtures, Doug helps Mallory out of the goodness of his broken heart.
Welcome to the Rileys is an uneven venture. Exploring themes of trust and grief, it is powered by the strength of Gandolfini's and Leo's earnest performances and the moody atmosphere created by director Jake Scott. Leo and Gandolfini bring their characters to life poignantly. Despite their 30-year marriage, he cries alone in his garage and she marvels, unaccompanied, at the starry night sky she hasn't seen in years. But as a convincing tale, Rileys trips up. Gandolfini subtly conveys Doug's shaky emotional moorings. His only false note is an accent that inexplicably toggles between Midwestern and Southern.
Doug's wife, Lois, mourns in a more constricted way. An agoraphobic, she won't — or can't — even venture into her front yard to pick up the mail.
But the script undermines their honest portrayals. Lois fears venturing outside her front door, but somehow she musters the courage to drive from Indianapolis to New Orleans. Her initial scenes stepping out are played for comedy, which strikes a jarring and rather insulting note in this otherwise somber film.
Screenwriter Ken Hixon wisely does not transform Mallory's seamy world into sweetness and light when Doug and Lois come on the scene. But Stewart's one-note range is a stumbling block. She's almost always in foul-mouthed and ungrateful mode, so it's a stretch to imagine that this ordinary couple would be inspired to play surrogate parents.
Stewart's idea of inhabiting this part seems to be to scowl a lot and let her hair go unwashed. The Twilight star doesn't have the depth or emotional agility to go toe-to-toe with Gandolfini and Leo. She emerges as a wretched caricature.
Stories of loss and redemption are tough to pull off without resorting to contrivance or schmaltz. Welcome to the Rileys does manage to avoid sentimentality. But only two-thirds of this unlikely trio comes close to capturing the complexity of anguish and pain.
Welcome to the Rileys
* * 1/2 out of four
Stars: James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, Kristen Stewart
Director: Jake Scott
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Rating: R for strong sexual content, brief drug use and pervasive language involving a teenager
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Opens Friday in select theaters
usatoday
After all those years playing Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini knows his way around a stripper pole.
In Welcome to the Rileys, Gandolfini plays Doug Riley, a plumbing contractor who slips out of a New Orleans convention and pops into a seedy strip club. But this is no Bada Bing, and Doug is not there for a joy ride.
Like Tony, Doug is an emotionally shattered guy who has kept secrets from his wife (Melissa Leo). He also is a take-charge fixer, but not the kind who breaks kneecaps or orders hits.
In a way that happens only in the movies, Doug takes Mallory (Kristen Stewart), a 16-year-old stripper/hooker, under his wing. He sees in her a vague resemblance to the teenage daughter he lost in a tragic accident.
Doug repairs her filthy apartment, paying her for the privilege, and instructs Mallory to clean up her act, including fining her for every F-bomb she drops.
But Doug is no smug Henry Higgins, transforming a tough-talking urchin into a princess. He's a man trying desperately to outrun grief. Resisting her carnal overtures, Doug helps Mallory out of the goodness of his broken heart.
Welcome to the Rileys is an uneven venture. Exploring themes of trust and grief, it is powered by the strength of Gandolfini's and Leo's earnest performances and the moody atmosphere created by director Jake Scott. Leo and Gandolfini bring their characters to life poignantly. Despite their 30-year marriage, he cries alone in his garage and she marvels, unaccompanied, at the starry night sky she hasn't seen in years. But as a convincing tale, Rileys trips up. Gandolfini subtly conveys Doug's shaky emotional moorings. His only false note is an accent that inexplicably toggles between Midwestern and Southern.
Doug's wife, Lois, mourns in a more constricted way. An agoraphobic, she won't — or can't — even venture into her front yard to pick up the mail.
But the script undermines their honest portrayals. Lois fears venturing outside her front door, but somehow she musters the courage to drive from Indianapolis to New Orleans. Her initial scenes stepping out are played for comedy, which strikes a jarring and rather insulting note in this otherwise somber film.
Screenwriter Ken Hixon wisely does not transform Mallory's seamy world into sweetness and light when Doug and Lois come on the scene. But Stewart's one-note range is a stumbling block. She's almost always in foul-mouthed and ungrateful mode, so it's a stretch to imagine that this ordinary couple would be inspired to play surrogate parents.
Stewart's idea of inhabiting this part seems to be to scowl a lot and let her hair go unwashed. The Twilight star doesn't have the depth or emotional agility to go toe-to-toe with Gandolfini and Leo. She emerges as a wretched caricature.
Stories of loss and redemption are tough to pull off without resorting to contrivance or schmaltz. Welcome to the Rileys does manage to avoid sentimentality. But only two-thirds of this unlikely trio comes close to capturing the complexity of anguish and pain.
Welcome to the Rileys
* * 1/2 out of four
Stars: James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, Kristen Stewart
Director: Jake Scott
Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Rating: R for strong sexual content, brief drug use and pervasive language involving a teenager
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Opens Friday in select theaters
usatoday
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Welcome to the Rileys (2010)
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum Oct 29, 2010
Lisa Schwarzbaum Lisa Schwarzbaum is a film critic for EW.
Details:
Release Date: Nov 05, 2010; Rated: R; Length: 110 Minutes; With: James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Kristen Stewart
In Welcome to the Rileys, James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo play Doug and Lois Riley, a long-married couple from Indiana who have grown perilously apart in the years following the death of their only daughter. Then Doug takes a business trip to New Orleans and crosses paths with Mallory (Kristen Stewart), an angry teenage runaway stripper/hooker. Long story short, he moves into Mallory's post-Katrina hovel to look after her — like she's a replacement daughter. Then Lois, formerly agoraphobic, drives south to reclaim her husband. And she too meets Mallory. Healing happens.
Had this glumly lit movie, directed by Jake Scott (son of Ridley Scott) from a script by Ken Hixon, been based on a novel or the archives of the long-running ''Can This Marriage Be Saved?'' column in Ladies' Home Journal, the filmmakers' attachment to arbitrary building blocks of plot might have been more forgivable. As an original indie drama, though, the overload of soapsuds (and the production's excessive attention to on-location squalor) at times overwhelms the earnest performances of the three very good lead actors, who work hard to convey the feelings of loss and loneliness that come from lack of communication. Incidentally, Rileys has been casually dubbed ''Kristen Stewart's stripper movie,'' but the handle doesn't stick: Stewart may wear skimpy clothes and grind once or twice from the neck down, but from the neck up she's all hollow, bruised eyes, twisted little mouth, and classic, coltish K-Stew rebellion.
Welcome to the Rileys (2010)
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum Oct 29, 2010
Lisa Schwarzbaum Lisa Schwarzbaum is a film critic for EW.
Details:
Release Date: Nov 05, 2010; Rated: R; Length: 110 Minutes; With: James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Kristen Stewart
In Welcome to the Rileys, James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo play Doug and Lois Riley, a long-married couple from Indiana who have grown perilously apart in the years following the death of their only daughter. Then Doug takes a business trip to New Orleans and crosses paths with Mallory (Kristen Stewart), an angry teenage runaway stripper/hooker. Long story short, he moves into Mallory's post-Katrina hovel to look after her — like she's a replacement daughter. Then Lois, formerly agoraphobic, drives south to reclaim her husband. And she too meets Mallory. Healing happens.
Had this glumly lit movie, directed by Jake Scott (son of Ridley Scott) from a script by Ken Hixon, been based on a novel or the archives of the long-running ''Can This Marriage Be Saved?'' column in Ladies' Home Journal, the filmmakers' attachment to arbitrary building blocks of plot might have been more forgivable. As an original indie drama, though, the overload of soapsuds (and the production's excessive attention to on-location squalor) at times overwhelms the earnest performances of the three very good lead actors, who work hard to convey the feelings of loss and loneliness that come from lack of communication. Incidentally, Rileys has been casually dubbed ''Kristen Stewart's stripper movie,'' but the handle doesn't stick: Stewart may wear skimpy clothes and grind once or twice from the neck down, but from the neck up she's all hollow, bruised eyes, twisted little mouth, and classic, coltish K-Stew rebellion.
C+
ew.com
ew.com
THE NY OBSERVER
Unwelcome Guests: Great Acting Can’t Save the Leaden Welcome to the Rileys
By Rex Reed
James Gandolfini has a face as malleable as taffy. I have never seen him give a performance that didn't startle, transfix and thoroughly please me. Built like Humpty Dumpty, with a melting smile and a countenance so changeable and expressive that he can show several emotions at the same time, he is never less than irresistible. So good, in fact, that he can almost make a dreary disappointment like Welcome to the Rileys bearable. But not for long. Despite its good intentions, this earnest little film seems embalmed.
It begins with a typical dead-end evening in the unhappy life of Doug Riley, who spends every Thursday night stuck in the same routine—poker, waffles and sex with the waitress at the Pancake House. Doug owns a plumbing supply business in Indianapolis that offers no respite from a life consumed with mourning over the death of his daughter, Emily, in a car crash. At home, he sits in a dark garage and smokes forbidden cigarettes while his wife, Lois (the always reliable Melissa Leo), locks herself away, works on her ceramics, stares at the walls and sees images of Emily dancing across her eyeballs. She's a tortured agoraphobic who hasn't been out of the house in eight years. They're polite strangers, occupying the same empty space but joined together only by mutual loss. The holes in their hearts cannot be filled, so Doug looks beyond their tunnel vision for outside help when he attends a convention in New Orleans and becomes infatuated with a tough 16-year-old runaway stripper and borderline crack whore (Kristen Stewart, from vampire fame in the Twilight series), who is as lonely and lost as he is. It never occurs to anybody in this movie to call in a psychiatrist. Why settle for easy when there's so much pain just waiting to be experienced, like eating broken glass?
As Doug's paternal interest grows and a reluctant, mismatched relationship develops, the movie drags on, piling on one preposterous situation after another. He closes his business back home and offers the girl $100 a day, no strings attached, just to let him move into her sordid house with no electricity and a filthy toilet that's been stopped up for years. If that's not implausible enough, Lois suddenly drives all the way from Indiana to Louisiana, breathing into a paper bag to keep from hyperventilating. Now all three of them are making beds, painting walls and dusting the dirt in a faux family pretense as dopey as it is bizarre. Trying to save the girl from drugs and prostitution by forcing her to brush her teeth and sleep on clean sheets with hospital corners, Mrs. Riley dispenses advice on venereal disease, and Mr. Riley docks her a dollar every time she uses the F word. It has just the opposite effect of compassion, and just seems simple-minded and, frankly, funny in all the wrong places.
What keeps this leaden freighter afloat is the acting. Melissa Leo, in another gallant entry in her gallery of oddballs, and Mr. Gandolfini, eons away from his role in The Sopranos, bring nuance to the task of toting Ms. Stewart out of decadence and sin, but the sexy squalor of the Big Easy wins every time. The cheap glitter of New Orleans is an ornamental contrast to the numbness of Indianapolis, but practically no use is made of the colorful ambience it offers. This movie could just as well have been made in Pismo Beach. The whole thing makes you feel like you're stoned. By the time Lois says, "She's not Emily," and the Rileys head back home, you're too tired to mumble, "What took you so long?" You just wonder what Jake Scott, the director son of Ridley Scott, and Ken Hixon, the confused and inconsistent screenwriter, were smoking. Whatever it is, I'll have what they're having.
rreed@observer.com
WELCOME TO THE RILEYS
Running time 110 minutes
Written by Ken Hixon
Directed by Jake Scott
Starring James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, Melissa Leo, Ally Sheedy
2/4
observer
BOSTON.COM
Performances boost small, strange drama.
By Ty Burr - Globe Staff
I want to say that “Welcome to the Rileys’’ stars two good actors and Kristen Stewart, but that’s not only mean, it misrepresents the case. This small, strange, achingly sincere character drama lets James Gandolfini flex his creative muscles by playing the kind of kindhearted soul Tony Soprano would probably back over on his way to the Pork Store. Melissa Leo once again invests a role with a weathered, naturalistic grace that you only notice afterward, like smoke in the air.
Stewart? As usual, she’s just there, but I can’t think of another young actress who makes her there-ness work so well. All three actors come at this gloomy, borderline-preposterous tale from different directions; that they meet up at all — and they do — is a tribute to sincerity and craft.
It’s a little harder for the audience. The story line invites such horselaughs that writer Ken Hixon and director Jake Scott handle it too gingerly, as if at the end of tongs. Gandolfini plays Doug Riley, an easygoing Indiana plumbing-supplies wholesaler whose marriage and life have drifted after the death of his teenage daughter in a car accident. His wife, Lois (Leo), has a simpler approach to grief: She hasn’t left the house in years.
The unexpected death of a waitress (Eisa Davis) with whom Doug was carrying on a casual affair sends him into a spiral; during a plumbing convention in New Orleans, he goes AWOL and into the orbit of Mallory (Stewart), a teen-runaway stripper with a mouth like a toilet and post-Katrina living arrangements that are like the toilet’s toilet.
Doug’s not interested in what Mallory’s selling; to her considerable confusion, he checks out of his hotel with the aim of fixing up her house and life. The early scenes between the two are awfully queasy, and they aren’t helped by Gandolfini’s come-and-go Southern accent. When Lois decides she has to see what her wayward husband is up to, though, “Welcome to the Rileys’’ takes on a peculiar and gentle charm. Watching Leo convey the character’s wonderment as she solves the puzzle of driving a car for the first time in a decade is very special indeed.
The director’s the son of Ridley Scott (“Alien,’’ “Gladiator’’), and it’s as if he had consciously set up camp far from dad’s turf. “Rileys’’ is slow and observant rather than slick and propulsive; it waits for the actors to bring it home rather than dazzling us with style. While there’s much to be said for that, real is one thing and forceful another, and the movie’s discreet humanism too often stays on the page.
Gandolfini and Leo still convince us there’s a genuine marriage there, with genuine affection underpinning it, and Stewart somehow builds a character out of her patented mix of shrugs and sullenness. The movie deglamorizes both Mallory and the actress playing her; by the final scenes, the character’s very much the raw adolescent the other two mistakenly see as a replacement daughter. As a whole, though, “Welcome to the Rileys’’ tiptoes around its emotions without ever committing to them. You’re glad it’s not “Tony and Bella’s Big Adventure’’ even as you suspect that might have been a lot more fun.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movienation.
WELCOME TO THE RILEYS
Directed by: Jake Scott
Written by: Ken Hixon
Starring: James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, Melissa Leo
At: Kendall Square, West Newton
Running time: 110 minutes
Rated: R (strong sexual content, brief drug use, pervasive language involving a teenager)
boston
Directed by: Jake Scott
Written by: Ken Hixon
Starring: James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, Melissa Leo
At: Kendall Square, West Newton
Running time: 110 minutes
Rated: R (strong sexual content, brief drug use, pervasive language involving a teenager)
boston
Wall Street Journal
"Welcome to the Rileys": Review Revue
James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo, stars of the new indie “Welcome to the Rileys,” are certifiably excellent actors. The jury is still out on co-star Kristen Stewart, but the young “Twilight” phenom certainly has potential. The question is whether the three can elevate what in with “Rileys” sounds like a cliche-ridden plot.
Gandolfini and Leo play a husband and wife grieving over the death of their daughter (cliche No. 1). Gandolfini has an affair (cliche No. 2), then travels to New Orleans on a business trip and meets underage hooker Stewart (cliche No.3) and the two form a tenuous bond (cliche No. 4). Does the movie rise above that melodramatic foundation? Here’s what critics are saying.
“James Gandolfini has a face as malleable as taffy. I have never seen him give a performance that didn’t startle, transfix and thoroughly please me. Built like Humpty Dumpty, with a melting smile and a countenance so changeable and expressive that he can show several emotions at the same time, he is never less than irresistible. So good, in fact, that he can almost make a dreary disappointment like Welcome to the Rileys bearable. But not for long. Despite its good intentions, this earnest little film seems embalmed.” [Rex Reed, The New York Observer]
“The fine acting (when will a movie rise to Gandolfini’s level like David Chase’s “The Sopranos” did?) and Scott’s slow, natural build (scored with soft piano by Marc Streitenfeld) hides the film’s outlandish underpinnings. But those are laid bare late in the movie, when the save-the-prostitute-with-a-golden-heart cliche treads too obviously.” [Jake Coyle, AP via Macleans]
“Had this glumly lit movie, directed by Jake Scott (son of Ridley Scott) from a script by Ken Hixon, been based on a novel or the archives of the long-running ”Can This Marriage Be Saved?” column in Ladies’ Home Journal, the filmmakers’ attachment to arbitrary building blocks of plot might have been more forgivable. As an original indie drama, though, the overload of soapsuds (and the production’s excessive attention to on-location squalor) at times overwhelms the earnest performances of the three very good lead actors, who work hard to convey the feelings of loss and loneliness that come from lack of communication.” [Lisa Schwarzbaum, EW]
Rollings Stone Movie review: WTTR
Would you believe Kristen Stewart as an underage New Orleans stripper who hooks on the side? Or James Gandolfini as a married Indiana plumbing salesman who'd rather adopt her than screw her? Then Welcome to the Rileys may reach you in ways it never reached me.
Stewart, out of her Twilight zone, is less mannered than usual. And Gandolfini commits fully to the gentle side of a man who sees his dead daughter reborn in KStew's lap dancer. Melissa Leo also scores as his agoraphobic wife. But the actors and admirably sensitive director Jake Scott (son of Ridley) can't compensate for Ken Hixon's long slog of a script.
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