Merv: Doggone ordinary

Merv (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild profanity and suggestive elements

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

This easygoing rom-com is cute … but dumb.

 

Unlike its title character, who is cute and smart.

 

Anna (Zooey Deschanel) isn't happy when Russ (Charlie Cox) drags her along for a
visit with his parents, but Merv — in the back seat — is delighted. He'll get to spend
time with all of his favorite people.

Director Jessica Swale’s modest film has three things going for it: human stars Zooey Deschanel and Charlie Cox, and an amazingly expressive wire-haired terrier rescue mix named Gus. Beyond that, Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart’s script is as predictable as morning dew and noontime sun, with nary a surprise along the way.

 

Granted, the result often is charming and goes down easily; there are worse ways to spend 105 minutes. Happy endings can be quite satisfying, even when they’re telegraphed from the onset.

 

Boston-based Anna (Deschanel) and Russ (Cox) share alternating custody weeks of their beloved dog, Merv (Gus), after having gone their separate ways. Their break-up — after several years together — came as surprise to friends and family, who believed them an ideal couple destined for marriage.

 

Russ works as an elementary school teacher, and has a good time with his young students. Alas, he’s a wreck at home: listless, unwilling to clean up stuff, clearly unhappy. Anna, an optometrist, is professional but stoic; she conceals her feelings to friends and colleagues.

 

Christmas is approaching, and — regardless of who he’s with — Merv is inconsolable. He mopes constantly and shows little interest in playing. A concerned visit to a vet (Andrea Laing) reveals nothing physically wrong, but she perceptively notices that Merv is depressed. Why? Because he likes having both of his people around.

 

Well, that isn’t in the cards (although we know it is, eventually). Meanwhile, Russ impulsively feigns the flu to get out of work, and bundles Merv up for a relaxing and playful week at a Florida-based doggy spa. This setting is laden with opportunities for sight gags, and Clark and Stewart don’t miss any: dogs doing yoga, an oh-so-sincere animal “spiritual healer” (Wynn Everett) and plenty of lunatic owners.

 

The dynamic gets even more chaotic when Anna crashes the party: not because she misses Russ (although she clearly does), but supposedly so Merv can benefit from a week with both of them.

 

Russ loves the beachified surroundings; Anna is (ahem) allergic to sunlight, which gives costume designer Allison Pearce an excuse to pour Deschanel into all sorts of unflattering outfits. Apparently that’s intended to be funny, but it comes off as weird.

 

The Theory of Everything: A beautiful mind

The Theory of Everything (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for dramatic intensity and mild suggestive material
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.5.14

It’s necessary, up front, to recognize that this film is adapted from Jane Wilde Hawking’s 1999 memoir, Music to Move the Stars: A Life with Stephen (extensively updated and re-published in 2008, as Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen).

During Cambridge's annual May Dance, Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) can't quite get into the
spirit of the event itself — for openers, he refuses to dance! — but his goofy charm
nonetheless makes an increasingly strong impact on Jane (Felicity Jones).

We therefore cannot be surprised by the saintly hue that Felicity Jones brings to her portrayal of Jane: devoted, compassionate and (particularly) patient beyond comprehension. To be sure, selfless caregivers certainly exist in real life: quiet heroes who rarely receive the admiration they so richly deserve. And there’s no doubt that Jane Hawking must’ve had a very hard life, during her early years with a husband succumbing to motor neuron disease (MND, which is related to ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

But no displays of impatience or hostility, no raging against the universe, no signs of crumbling on Jane’s part? Even if we acknowledge traditional British reserve, that’s a bit hard to swallow here.

Hard, perhaps, but not impossible ... thanks to James Marsh’s thoughtful, sensitive direction, and the incandescent performances by Jones and most particularly Eddie Redmayne. The latter looks, moves and sounds so much like Stephen Hawking, that at times it’s hard not to believe it’s actually him on the screen.

Most crucially, Redmayne captures Hawking’s goofy grin, sparkling eyes and irrepressible, Puckish sense of humor. After the MND robs the man of his limbs — and, eventually, even his ability to speak — Redmayne nonetheless continues to convey a wealth of emotion with faint head movements, raised eyebrows, a twitch of that famous smile, and his darting, ever-inquisitive eyes that miss nothing.

We’ve not seen an actor so thoroughly inhabit a physically challenged role since Mathieu Amalric’s portrayal of Jean-Dominique Bauby, in 2007’s equally fine The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Bauby’s life changed in an instant, though, whereas Hawking — and his friends, colleagues and family — endured the heartbreak of his slow, debilitating slide into utter helplessness.

But we begin in happier times. It’s 1963, where Stephen is a cosmology student at Cambridge University: the mischievous, easily distracted member of a doctoral team being supervised by famed British physicist Dennis W. Sciama (David Thewlis, in a nicely understated performance). Stephen’s apparent disconnection from real-world requirements is a source of constant amusement to roommate and best friend Brian (Harry Lloyd), who probably has to remind his buddy to eat and sleep on a regular basis.