The Clubhouse Podcast

iTunes Exclusive Episode St Vincent

September 11, 2016 Season 5, Episode 108

Rob and Don review Saint Vincent, directed by Theodore Melphi and starring Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, and Naomi Watts. The film follows a curmudgeonly old man in Boston who reluctantly babysits his new neighbor's young son after school. Both hosts praised the film's engaging story, strong performances across the cast, and emotional climax, with Rob calling it a contender for his favorite film of the year.

About this episode

Key takeaways

  • Bill Murray delivers an outstanding performance as Vincent, maintaining his comedic sensibility while portraying a gruff elderly man dealing with serious life circumstances
  • Melissa McCarthy shows dramatic range in a more subdued role as a single mother, moving away from purely comedic parts like her work in Tammy
  • The film's comedy flows throughout its entire runtime, including during the credits, which hosts recommend staying to watch
  • Director Theodore Melphi prioritizes actor performances over visual spectacle, using a modest budget effectively to tell a character-driven story
  • The final 10 minutes deliver emotional resonance and expertly handle the film's climax and resolution

Q&A

Is Saint Vincent appropriate for families?

Yes, hosts recommend it for high schoolers and above, describing it as good for families, date nights, and viewing with friends.

Would you recommend paying full price to see this film in theaters?

Rob strongly recommends full price theatrical viewing and says to see it any way possible. Don recommends matinee or twilight pricing but still considers it worth a full Saturday night theater experience.

How is the story structure of the film?

While certain plot points are predictable, the film includes unexpected twists and turns that create surprises for viewers, and it could have been told from the child's perspective but instead takes a more neutral approach revealing Vincent's layers.

What is the concern about young actor Jaden Lieber's career?

Rob worries about potential typecasting after a standout debut role, though Don notes this is less likely to be an issue compared to actors who appeared in multiple films in franchises like Harry Potter.

Read Transcript

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The following is a sooner orgator production. The following is a sooner orgator production. The following is a sooner orgator production.

Greetings, Empire member or members. If you are hearing my voice, it means a couple of things. Number one, it means you're listening to, I guess you call it a version of the clubhouse podcast.

Because what you are listening to right now is that I, tunes, excuse me, we want to welcome you. No matter where you're listening, you subscribe when I tunes, I'm going to give you a song extra for that. My name is Rob, and I am the executive producer, slash ringmaster of the clubhouse podcast.

But I am not alone for this particular, I tune to this tune to this tune to this tune to this tune. Joining me for this particular episode is the official fact checker of this show. The man who would only be nominated for St.

Hood, if there was a lot of other options taken. And he'll freely admit that. You may know I was fond on go, but his mom and they even don't want to call him Don Ford.

Welcome sir. Thank you. I know don't get religious by not Catholic, so I'm not saying that so.

I can't control so, so this is the only, he's exactly deals with saints. But it is great to be back. We had to take it, you know, because we had to take it, we had to take it a little high and just understandably, but we're back for the empire.

It's great to be back. It's good. It's just good to.

We're not officially back in the studio for a full episode yet, but we took it all off. And remember, if you make sure you listen to our regular episodes too, because the episode recorded before this one was live from Dallas video, best 27, and the next live show will also be from Dallas video, best 27, so check that out. Whatever we do, one of these is usually to review something, and today is no exception.

Today we are here to review the latest movie, starring Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, and Naomi Watts, directed by Theodore Melphi, it's called Saint Vincent. Melphi kind of new to the game, a lot of producing just a couple of films that he's directed, but we're going to get to that here in just a minute. This is the story of Vincent, who is a crum-mudgenly old man, as you can, as the kids like to say.

What's the Boston accent kind of? Oh, we'll talk about that again too, but he is played by the great Bill Murray, and he just kind of does what he does. He's got his own way of doing things, and that's the way he likes to do things, and probably not the healthiest way to live one's life, and the activities he's involved in.

Just about every sitting there is. Yeah, I think he's got them all covered, and one day he's awakened by a moving truck that has backed into a tree in his front yard, and the moving truck is contracted to his brand new neighbor named Maggie, played by, again, the great Melissa McCarthy. She has a single mom of a young man named Oliver, played by Jaden Lieber, and he really doesn't want to have anything to do with them.

He just wants to do his own thing, and one of his own things is dealing with a lady of the evening named DACA, played by Naomi Watts, and what ends up happening is Maggie gets a job as a CT tech at a local hospital. She ends up working very long hours, and because of that, she ends up asking Vincent to basically play babysitter for her young son Oliver after school until she can get home, and the shenanigans shall we say, begin there. Well, we're going to start about the overall look of the film with director Theodore Melphi.

This is his third feature. Don, I'm going to just go and ask you, how did you feel, with the story and look of this, where we're going to come buy those two on this one? Well, first, we got to think our dear friends, allied, and great to talk about.

Our best friends in the entire world. Who worked? Who, you know, we had to take a little bit of a hiatus, and we're totally understanding, and they were amazingly understanding, and sent a couple of really nice email supporting us.

So I want to thank them specifically. Yeah, thank you on that. Look at the film.

For what the film was, the look, the field of film, nothing extraordinary. I'll put it that way, but nothing disappointing. So it's your neighbor, normal neighbor, kind of movie with the normal look of the New England style film, you know.

So nothing extravagant there, I didn't hate it, didn't find any super exciting, but I liked it. The direction of the film, concerning this, is, you know, kind of a big debut for the new director here. I thought the direction of the film was very good.

Okay. If float well, the story is kind of predictable, but that's what you expect with some like this. But what do you do with the predictability?

They do a lot of great twists and turns with this film. I'm going to disagree with you a little bit when you talk about predictability, certain aspects of the film, yes, you could see coming out of my wall. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

However, there was a couple of points in the film that I went, oh dear, so that happened. And that's what I'm talking about, yeah, me too, which that makes the movie very good in a nutshell. Comedy is incredible in this.

It doesn't stop after the halfway mark of the two-thirds mark. It goes all the way through the credits, stay through the credits, absolutely. Yeah, stay through the credits.

You'll be entertained during them. So I looked how the comedy flowed, the look of the film, nothing, you know, stand out, it's like avatar or something like that. But overall, the flow and everything in the direction that that was good.

I really liked the look of the film. It didn't have that big budget look to it, but it didn't have to. To tell a story like this.

This story was more driven by the performances than it would have been by visuals. And I think that Melvey understood that. And he kind of let his actors do what they do.

I never felt that it was low budget or bush league, anyway, it was well shot, and that's hard to do, especially when you have a lower budget. And you really have to rely on your cast. Well, I agree with you, 100%.

I also thought that the story was very, very good. The story was very, very engaging. It kept me going the whole time.

I was never bored. Me neither. And I never tried.

And the trailer in this film tells you very, very little. It gets you enough to be intrigued, but doesn't over-tell the story, which was great because when we went inside, that was much better for me. Because I wasn't worried about, well, I kind of know the whole thing going in.

Yeah, the basic plot, which is kind of understandable, which you know, but everything else that he adds on, it's like, okay, here's the steak now, but I'm going to add the mashed potatoes. I'm going to add the gravy. I'm going to add the spare gas.

I'm adding the garlic bread. He's adding all that stuff to those layers. And I think it made a great meal when it came down to it.

Well, let's talk about the ingredients of those meals. We'll talk about the performances. I'm going to let you once again lead off, sir.

Um, Bill Murray incredible. I always expect greatness from Bill Murray. It's kind of a thing you take for granted, but this one stood out.

I thought he is the way he played the role. There's a lot of old people in this world who he would fit in and are probably the mirror image of. And he played that perfectly for what he but it was.

Bringing the guy who likes to all the drinking and gambling, smoking all that, the old kind of just geezer type. But he played that role incredible and there's one point in what's where you get to remain spoiler free on. Absolutely.

Where something happens with him. Right about midway through the way through the camera. Sure.

There's an event that's I'm going to say. But he still keeps being Bill Murray. To me, he keeps still keeps being Vincent.

Yeah, I mean Vincent. I'm Ambitate St Vincent is what I'm at. The little, the smart cracks, the comedy, but still being the grippy old man at the same time.

This guy was the whole thing together in one. And there is talk of possibly, you know, February, hitting for him on this role possibility. He was through the rough McCarthy.

She's more subdued role than some of the other films where she's outlanders like heat and stuff like that because she's played in a mother. So she's not, there's some good comedy roles with her, but she's not the comedic standout on this role. She's the little bit more serious in this role.

But that was she still did it very good. Terrence Howard has the incredible Terrence Howard's in this film. And a lot of great, like Terrence Howard's not in a very long, but a great performance about him.

Great performance, totally from him. And the, uh, Jaden, uh, Labyrinth and Bronner or whatever. The, uh, the child who befriends Vincent.

He did incredible. He did incredible on this role. Um, plays the, the kid building out relationship with Vincent incredibly.

Um, I think there's a possible future for this kid in the movie industry. I was not disappointed by him at all. I think they had a great pick when I got this cast.

For me, first of all, let me just say amazing performances all the way through this. You're not going to find, you're not going to find a, a performance that you're not going to like. Another one of my favorite actors, Reggie Gaines has a very small role in this, which who I'm, I'm a huge fan of him.

Um, I understand where you're coming from with Bill Murray, but here's my problem. Bill Murray, first of all, gets, just more and more amazing as he gets older. And I didn't think that was possible.

What may hurt him as far as actor nominations go is that the field is so deep this year. I think them them releasing this film so late in the year will help him because you're, your last impression is always, you know, the first one that's going to come out. Uh, but there's so many great performances this year.

What I'm worried about is a lot of people are just going to go well. That's just Bill Murray in this phase of his career that he's just consistently that good. But I would love to, I would love to see him get nominated.

Don't get me wrong because he was absolutely amazing in this role. And I, and I even said to you during the screening that the older he's getting, the more that, that he and his brother Brian Doyle Murray are starting to, to look and act alike. Which is not a bad thing because I love both of them.

Uh, Naomi Watson this. Really committed to that part. And I thought she was absolutely amazing.

I agree with you on Melissa McCarthy and it's one thing that I've been telling people as we've been, I've been talking about this movie with people is it's good to see her not doing the wacky. And a lot of people had such a bad taste in their mouth after Tammy that it's good to kind of see this film come out now. So kind of bring her back around a little bit because I saw trailers for Tammy and went, no, there's no way I'm going to deal with this film because this, and everything I've heard is just it's just not a very good film.

I think if this had come out before that, she might have some more problems. But I think this film is going to bring a lot of people back to her because she gets to show some dramatic chops. She's still a little, a little wacky, but that's her.

But it's not, it's not Brian's main's wacky. Yeah, totally. And you get to see a side of her.

Right, right, you don't get to see us, you get to see a side of her that you haven't. A lot of people haven't seen yet. You get to see a more human side of her.

Yeah, the young man who plays Oliver, I liked him a lot. Like he, when you're that age, probably what you say 9 or 10, somewhere around there, and you're, you're toe to toe with a guy like Bill Murray, who was an absolute legend in this business. And you hang with him, which he did.

My worry for him is I don't want him getting typecast because when you're a kid actor like that and you do a role like this, a lot of people just want you to do that. And at some point, the, the public's going to have to deal with him as he grows. So I hope that his career can go with it because I thought as an actor, he was great.

Well, one film like this, I don't think it's going to typecast nearly as much as like getting your red cliff with seven movies in the Harry Potter business. There's a big night and day on that, but I see your point, but I don't think that's, I don't think he's going to have too much of a worry on that. Because he's done some minor stuff and but this is kind of the big wait for him, but he played it well.

And I, you know, your first role, he's still open to a lot of potential and some other stuff. And what I say this, I gave you two words, McColley Colkan. True.

This, that's what I worry about because McColley was a great actor, but he just got typecast into that home alone thing. Yeah. And it didn't really get, he didn't really get to flourish as an actor as I like to have seen him.

This kid, I think, can. Terrence Howard, what else do you say? He's Terrence Howard.

You get what you get exactly. He's always amazing. The layers of this story because you get to learn so much about the character of Vincent that you go from hating him to loving to hate him to hating the love him.

Totally. And the way that story was told and what's kind of neat is he could have told the story from the kid's point of view, but he told him from a more neutral point of view. Vincent's point of view, yes, but you get to see the layers to Vincent that maybe some of the other characters don't.

And the final wall kind of thing. Yes. And the last 10 minutes of this film, I was emotional.

You know, giving some things that I had been through recently, probably were were fueling some of that. But the climax of the film into its resolution was so beautiful. And expertly done, it's going to tug at your heartstrings.

It knows what it has to do and it accomplishes that. And which is what I really love about this film. And I said it in my written review that you can read on our website www.clubhousepodcast.com.

This movie is trying to be my favorite movie of the year. It's trying real hard. Can we say probably it's usually going to make your top 10?

Absolutely. And we're going to do a top 10 this year. We're going to have a full year of screenings.

So we're going to do a top 10 at the end of the year. This movie right now is trying to be my favorite movie of the year. It is that good.

And I don't put those words out there unless I mean them. But let's get to the final analysis. That's a great segue into that.

We're not going to give you stars. We're not going to give you thumbs-up thumbs-down. We're not going to give you, you know, a letter grade because you as an audience, we call you the empire.

You are better than that. What the way we give you a final analysis, it's a two-prong question question number one is, would you see this film again if the answer is no, we're done here. If the answer is yes, we moved the question two.

Which is how would you see this film again? Would you pay full price? Would you go to a matinee?

Would you go to early morning show? Twilight? Would you wait for the second run?

Dvd or blue ray? Or would you wait till what's on cable? Don, we'll start with you.

Would you see this film again? Definitely. I will see this film sometime.

All right, excellent. And how would you recommend, or what would you be willing to pay to see this film? For me, it would be matinee twilight, but I would recommend for the family teenagers in the above in everybody above.

I would say you're like maybe like 16, 17, you know, high school. Let's say high school. Okay.

High schoolers in the above. This is good for about anybody above that. I would recommend us to someone.

This is a good Saturday night full price theater thing for family if you have high schoolers in the above. A good date movie. Absolutely.

Good comedy with you. You want to have a good comedy time with your friends? Something to talk about after the film.

It's a little bit of a conversation piece, not like some of the other with huge ones. But there's still stuff you can talk about after the fact. So I put this as a coveted, uh, I recommend this is the full price at the theaters.

I would definitely go see this movie again. I can't even put a label on how much I would pay to see this movie again. I don't care how you see this movie.

Go now. Go often. Tell everybody you know.

See this movie any possible way you can. It is absolutely wonderful. Congratulations to everybody involved in this thing.

It was absolutely amazing. Bill Murray. What else can you say?

Totally. The older he's getting, the better he's getting it when you don't think he can get any better. He proves you wrong.

Again, we got to think Kelsey and her baby allied for letting us see this thing. Some of our best friends in the world. We love them so much.

Thank you guys. Let's do the plugs. On our show.

There. There. Visit our website www.theclubhousepodcast.com.

Find that everything you need to know and some stuff you don't. Please like our Facebook page. Look up the clubhouse podcast on Facebook.

But the word podcast on the end or it's something completely different. Follow this show on Twitter at clubhouse show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I am at yes that Rob Urban that has felt ERV-I-N. My normal co-host of this show and another producer is Chad Womack. You can follow him at Chad N.

PG-69. I'm at Fondango and you can email me at Don at theclubhousepodcast.com. We love doing live shows just like we're going to be doing again at Dallas video Fest 27.

Email Don for details on that. Email me with show ideas, suggestions, comments, concerns, tell me to go pound sand. I am Rob at theclubhousepodcast.com.

Chad is Chad at theclubhousepodcast.com. Charlotte Parker is on Pinterest because we are morally obligated to say that. And Jules Womack.

Well, if Chad's not here, she's probably with him. Our normal show is every Sunday night, 7 Eastern, 4 Pacific. We are your one-stop shop for all things sports at entertainment.

So until the next time we talk, for Don for the Empire, I'm Rob. The clubhouse is closed and I know one scene that would have been a Brittany Palmer would have been perfect in, but I'll let you figure that out. The preceding was a sooner or later production.

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