Recencies van critici

As with Mills’ previous films, notably “Beginners” and my favorite so far, “20th Century Women,” there’s an archness and nattering overelaboration at work and play, not always fruitfully. But never for long. “C’mon C’mon” feels like a conscious step away from the ensemble sprawl of “20th Century Women.” Just when you grow frustrated with some of the developments... the actors get the breathing room and the material they need.

In a gentle, thoroughly present performance that feels light-years away from the histrionics of “Joker” and other recent outings, Phoenix returns to the kind of unforced naturalism and slow-burn intensity that made him great in the first place.

In the wrong hands, it might merely have amounted to treacly indie bullshit — its hazy, sensuous, black-and-white images are no disguise... Each time I watched C’mon, C’mon, part of me wanted to resist it. But I couldn’t. Mills takes the obvious and uses it to chip away at itself. Even if he hadn’t, these actors, with their palpable love and realistic tensions, would have made something of it.

Mills is one of the few filmmakers you could trust with a story like this; he never lets the proceedings veer into sentimentality. Maybe what he’s really doing is exploring the weight and texture of future childhood memories.

“C’mon C’mon” is the kind of movie that invites reflection. It’s not building towards a larger cinematic event or full of explosions. It’s a sincere drama about relationships, told from the perspectives of different members of one family.

If [the film's] rueful, midlife nostalgia doesn’t carry quite the same current of vibrant, urgent empathy as “20th Century Women” or “Beginners,” the small, polished pebbles of wisdom it unearths are still a pleasure to observe as they’re sent skimming across the surface of a delicate, compassionate film. For all its indulgent introspection, Mills’ latest remains miraculously unpunchable.

Perhaps more than anything [Mills] has done before, this soul-soothing new take on familiar fixations is unguarded and achingly truthful... Mills fights despair, not with false positivity but with compassion for our unifying uncertainty. Like a drop of drinking water in the salty ocean, it probably won’t save us, but it might keep us going just a little longer.

For all that his new film leaves unspoken or unspecified, it is cumulatively powerful and fundamentally serious... [but] “C’mon C’mon” is also joyous and mysteriously hopeful in its embrace of life’s warp, woof and wackiness.

The more Johnny gropes his way through his parenting duties, the more exasperating the character becomes, and the more precious and self-regarding the movie feels... Jesse makes sense as a character and periodically acts out — he’s a kid (a person!) and worried about his dad — but Johnny increasingly seems like a storytelling contrivance, as well as a lesson in enlightened gender roles.

The film’s latter half feels engineered to turn on the waterworks, but Mills’ thoughtful approach to his weighty subject matter somehow avoids being overly cloying. Look past the unorthodox narrative and you’ll find a touching story about how our relationships can provide solace and personal growth – whether we’re in our formative years or decades removed from them.

“C’mon C’mon” is a tender and turbulent melodrama that amplifies its power with a documentary current. The result is a film of an extraordinary amplitude; it’s both poised and frenetic, contemplative and active, heartily sentimental and astringently contentious, intensively intimate and expansively world-embracing, exactingly composed and wildly spontaneous. What’s more, it brings not only its characters but its cast of actors into the cinematic maelstrom of inner life, and thus offers an extraordinary showcase for their artistry.

Though perhaps not as wholly transcendent as [the director's] previous two (which is a very, very high bar), this latest is still an unmistakable joy... And, like most of Mills’ works, it’s about everything. He has a unique way of blending everyday banalities with cosmic questions and ideas to create lovely symphonies of humanity.