Jerry and Marge Go Large: Hugely entertaining

Jerry and Marge Go Large (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief profanity

Available via: Paramount+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.24.22

On an otherwise ordinary day in 2003, 64-year-old Jerry Selbee, a recent retiree living in the tiny Michigan town of Evart, drove to a small store in Mesick, roughly an hour away, and bought some lottery tickets.

 

Twenty-two hundred of them.

 

Convenience store owner Bill (Rainn Wilson, right) reacts with understandable surprise
when Jerry (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Marge (Annette Bening) explain how many
lottery tickets they wish to purchase.

His subsequent winnings totaled $2,150, for a slight loss on his $2,200 investment.

Quickly realizing that his statistical sample had been too small, the next time around he purchased 3,400 tickets … and won $6,300.

 

Jerry, whose varied professional career had included a lengthy stint as a materials analyst for Kellogg’s — yes, the cereal company — had discovered a mathematical flaw in Michigan’s Winfall state lottery game.

 

What happened next is depicted with cheeky merriment by director David Frankel and screenwriter Brad Copeland, adapted from Jason Fagone’s fascinating 2018 article in the Huffington Post (which absolutely is worth a read).

 

Bryan Cranston is perfectly cast as the quietly unassuming, buttoned-down Jerry: one of those mysterious mathematical savants capable of spotting patterns, where the rest of us would see only numbers (assuming we even looked in the first place). Cranston is ably supported by Annette Bening, as Jerry’s pragmatic wife Marge; the two actors are wholly persuasive as this adorably devoted couple.

 

Copeland’s screenplay condenses Jerry’s peripatetic working life to just a lengthy career at Kellogg’s: a forgivable shift from actual fact, since the only important detail is that the story begins as Jerry retires, and — not the type to feel comfortable without some project to occupy his whirlwind mind — frets about what to do next.

 

It certainly won’t have anything to do with the fishing boat that his family and friends surprise him with.

 

Nor is Jerry interested in any of the many suggestions — travel, buy a flash car — that come from their amiable friend and accountant, Steve (Larry Wilmore).

 

But Jerry does become intrigued, after picking up a brochure for the state’s new Winfall lottery game. A scan of the rules, and odds, quickly reveals a defect in one aspect of the game. (This involves a “roll down,” which is too mathematically complicated to describe in this review. Fagone’s lengthy article explains it.)

 

Cranston’s blend of disbelief, dawning awareness and excitement, is priceless.

The Meddler: Portrait of an endearing pest

The Meddler (2015) • View trailer 
4 stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.20.16

Marnie Minervini can solve any problem. Any problem.

And for those foolish enough to insist they’ve haven’t any problems, Marnie will help diagnose some previously overlooked “issue,” and then suggest the best possible course of action. She’s never wrong, and she’s the first person to admit as much.

During a dinner already laden with emotional angst, Marnie (Susan Saranon, left) watches
warily after her daughter, Lori (Rose Byrne), sees her ex enter the restaurant with his
new girlfriend.

In fairness, that opinion is shared by most folks on the receiving end of her largess — medical, spiritual or financial — who marvel at Marnie’s cheerful altruism, while assuming that she must be the world’s best, most caring mother.

Except that daughter Lori knows the truth, as do we: that Marnie is a nosy, relentlessly hovering, knows-no-boundaries nuisance who, despite her kind-hearted intentions, is a two-legged 24/7 nightmare.

She’s also the genius creation of actress-turned-writer/director Lorene Scafaria, who has concocted this character from the heart: from the complicated dynamic that resulted when, after her father died, her mother sold the family home in New Jersey and moved 3,000 miles to the West Coast, in order to be closer to her daughter.

“And,” Scafaria explains, in her film’s press notes, “I’ve been raising her in Los Angeles ever since.”

Granted, Scafaria has embellished a bit, but still: No mother could hope for a better, funnier, more even-handed portrait of a widow trying to work her way through grief, while blundering amid the walls freshly erected by a daughter struggling to process her frustration and sense of loss.

Nor could we, as viewers, request or expect anybody better than Susan Sarandon, when it came to depicting this character. Sarandon is a revelation, both on camera and while delivering Marnie’s stream-of-consciousness narration. I’d call the latter a clever means of illustrating just how exasperated Lori (Rose Byrne) gets, as the victim of her mother’s constant, intrusive nagging ... but the voice-overs are too hilarious to be viewed as irritating.

Mind you, it’s more accurate to call Sarandon’s delivery wincingly funny: As this film progresses, few things become scarier than watching Marnie plunge into a fresh crowd of strangers, knowing — with an odd blend of dread and amused anticipation — that she’s about to target fresh prey.