About Alex review

About Alex is a relatively obscure film, and one that initially didn't catch my eye. Now, having watched it, my initial disinterest was wholly justified, as the film is distinctly lacking in substance.

After Alex (Jason Ritter) attempts suicide, his friends Ben (Nate Parker), Siri (Maggie Grace), Josh (Max Greenfield), Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) and Isaac (Max Minghella) congregate at his house. Soon, however, his friends find they have their own problems.

The story doesn't focus on Alex, instead being an ensemble cast feature that diverges into the problems of each character. However, these problems are by and large extremely typical, never diverging much from textbook examples of simple conflicts. For a film that's ostensibly about a suicide attempt, there's a lot of focus put on the relationship problems of the characters, but almost none of the twists are of any interest, half the time being glossed over and the other half of the time being poorly written.

These twists might be the slightest bit interesting if they were in service of a point, but About Alex fails to find much in the way of footing there either. Any insights that could be gleamed from the movie are tired and far too well-worn to be of interest, and it's difficult to find any main theme deeper than "Friendships are good". Alex's character arc attempts to explore the affects of isolation, but it's so frequently abandoned in favour of dysfunctional relationships that it never manages to say anything fresh. Meanwhile, the relationship drama never amounts to any sort of point whatsoever, leaving it with an empty feeling compounded by how rote the script is.

The characters themselves are two-dimensional and barely experience much development, and what's there isn't interesting. Sure, they each have defined traits, and bouncing these off each other does provide a fair amount of amusement, but they never amount to much beyond that, consisting primarily of a handful of traits and a handful of shallow problems that attempt to give the illusion of depth that the characters don't have. Josh, for example, is identifiable primarily due to being a jerk, He never acts differently throughout the whole movie, and while this does allow him to spur on one of the major plot events, he remains flat throughout the course of the film. The rest of the cast is much the same, with anything that could be character development never amounting to much.

Now, this is a talented cast. While I'm not familiar with most of the actors' work, their performances in this film are uniformly superb. There's a certain level of conviction given to the material, and while the performances aren't particularly dynamic, that's because the script doesn't give them much to work with. Characters don't change, major moments are lacking in punch, and thus there's not much for these talented actors to do.

There's entertainment to find in About Alex, but the few mildly funny jokes are brought down by a lack of substance that results in the film being utterly forgettable. It has no thematic punch, and its jokes aren't great and frequent enough to hold up its rote, uninteresting script. There's no real reason to watch it, though it won't be a particularly horrible experience if you do choose to. Instead, it'll just be a forgettable, not especially compelling one.

4/10