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The Boston Globe
May 3, 1996
'Pallbearer' carries it off; MOVIE REVIEW; THE PALLBEARER
by Jay Carr
"The Pallbearer" is probably as close to "The Graduate" as we're going to get in the '90s - even if the resemblance sometimes seems so forced that the new film plays like a "Graduate" wannabe. But it's a winning film and a winning jump to the big screen for TV nerd David Schwimmer. As Dustin Hoffman did in the '60s, Schwimmer is able to make blankness sympathetic. Gwyneth Paltrow is a big plus, too, making confusion seem radiant, leaving no doubt about why Schwimmer's character should fall so discombobulatingly in love with her again in his 20s, after having had an unrequited crush on her as a high schooler. And Barbara Hershey scorches the screen as the Mrs. Robinson character - an older woman with whom he has an affair.
People in their unsettled 20s - presumably the group to whom the film is being pitched - may be put off by the assumption that they're all indecisive stumblers, uncertain of what they want or where they're going. In "The Graduate," Hoffman's problem was deciding which choice to make. Here, there don't even seem to be choices. But Schwimmer's timing makes his character's lack of focus engaging. He knows just how long to hold an expression of bafflement or guardedness. His scenes when he doesn't want Paltrow - whom he's attempting to romance by phone - to know that he's still living at home with his mother (Carol Kane) are among the film's best.
Paltrow is wonderful at projecting her character's integrity of heart. And you never turn against Hershey's unguided missile, because you know she turned to the younger man from loneliness and anguish. In fact, it's her phone call that sets the film in motion. She calls Schwimmer's character to say that she's the mother of a high school classmate of his who committed suicide. Since he was the dead young man's best friend, she adds, she'd appreciate it if he would deliver the eulogy. He's puzzled, since he barely knew the guy. Consenting because he can't figure out how to turn her down, he botches it. But he does meet up with Paltrow's character at the funeral and falls for her again. The trouble is that he also allows himself to be drawn into an affair with the needy older woman, who, among other things, wants to cling to her dead son through the guy she keeps referring to as his "best friend."
Schwimmer's best moments come when we can see the wheels spinning behind his basset-hound face, but going nowhere. If there's a weakness in "The Pallbearer," it's that the mystery enshrouding the young man's suicide is dealt with perfunctorily, almost as an afterthought. Ironically, the screenful of graduates who haven't figured out what they've been graduated into isn't far from today's contemporary TV comedies, although Michael Vartan, Toni Collette, Michael Rapaport and Bitty Schram move beyond sitcom sensibility as the unwitting pallbearer's pals. But it's Paltrow's younger woman and Hershey's older one who bring emotional solidity, intensity and honesty to "The Pallbearer," anchor it to deeply held feelings, make it matter. There isn't quite as much to "The Pallbearer" as it promises, but there's a lot. If any of the current crop of bright twentysomething comedies is going to enjoy breakout success, this will probably be the one.
© Globe Newspaper Company
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