Dark comedy does not come easily. Go too far, and your movie is at risk of being oppressively unlikable. But go too soft, and it is an unbalanced experience that has gums when it needs teeth. The latter is ultimately where the sorely milquetoast film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down lies.
It’s New Year's Eve, but for Martin (Pierce Brosnan), Jess (Imogen Poots), Maureen (Toni Collette) and JJ (Aaron Paul), it’s no party. By consequence, the four strangers — guided by their own insecurities and plagued troubles — find themselves gearing to jump off the same building at the same time. Rather than go through with their own self-regulated deaths, they form a unique pact of solidarity. Hoping to make their lives just a little bit better in an unforgiving world.
But, due to Martin’s status as a disgraced talk show host and Jess’s family connections to a local senator (Sam Flynn), their secret pact becomes a media firestorm. Despite this and other troubles, the new-found oddball clique tries to keep their solidarity promise: that, at least until Valentine’s Day, they will keep each other alive.
More than anything else, what drags down this adaptation is its persistent aims at being both sweet and dapper. For a dark comedy, this movie tries way too hard to be cutesy, resulting in a feature that is passive when it should be biting, and forgettable when it should be impacting.
That said, A Long Way Down is not without its charms. However, most of the time this comes from the well-selected cast’s hearty rapport. Even when their parts act too much like characters, there is typically at least a good-graced charm to be had. Of the four leads, Collette and Paul are the best at acting like grounded, troubled humans. Even though they have the characters guided with the most doubt by the audience — and even the other main characters — as to why they were on the roof in the first place. But Poots, even when overcooking her charm, can still crack a smile or melt your heart in the right moments.
Bronson is also well maneuvered in his performance, but the biggest problem with his character is that he is also too self-confident and well-humored to truly portray any psychological damage on Martin’s part. It makes sense in theory why he would want to kill himself, but his life never feels at risk.
Like many book-to-film adaptations, too much relies on voice-overs and not enough is shown. This is likely because, like its misguided tone, director Pascal Chaumeil seems too uncomfortable with touching the tones he wants to capture with this movie. In fact, it’s only during a nicely sensitive segment with Maureen and her son that Chaumeil seems at ease with what he wants to visually express.
Still, A Long Way Down is a nice looking movie, with confidently down-to-earth cinematography from Ben Davis (Guardians of the Galaxy) and moves at a good clip thanks to Chris Gill and Barney Pilling’s editing. The movie goes down alright. But because its narrative is so traditional and its tone is so discombobulated, its emotion is not earned and its humor is never translated.
Despite its solid premise, the movie itself is about as distraught as its characters. Perhaps even more so, since they often seem restricted to their bare essentials, despite always mentioning their deep-felt troubles for the audience's understanding. A Long Way Down tries to be a well-rounded dramedy, with occasional moments of deep psychological study, but its overly thought-out comedy loses any punch. Its drama is so manipulative that it never earns emotion and its psychological droughts are so rare that they go like a quick breeze.
But the cast works well together and the movie is deceptively (and wrongly) well-meaning. Which may just be enough for some — just not me.