Danner puts the glow in ‘Dreams’

If you're old enough to remember watching "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," then you're old enough to relate to the characters featured in the movie "I'll See You in My Dreams." And perhaps even sensitive enough to empathize with their feelings.

Whatever, a transcript of my review of "I'll See You in My Dreams" for Spokane Public Radio follows:

Blythe Danner has always been more a part of movie backdrops than anything resembling a featured player. Even in the first movie I ever remember seeing her in, 1979’s “The Great Santini,” she played third fiddle to Robert Duvall and Michael O’Keefe, both of whom earned Oscar nominations.

So now that she’s 72, you’d think that her career would be long over. Yet, thanks to writer director Brett Haley, it isn’t. The woman better known to the world at large as Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom is the star of Haley’s small, yet effective, film “I’ll See You in My Dreams.”

And the wait for Danner’s movie star to glow has been worth the effort.

She plays Carol Petersen, a septuagenarian, widowed for two decades, who lives a disciplined, staid life with her pet dog, her three best pals, a nightly bottle of chardonnay and the sense that anything resembling romance has long passed her by – a sense that is magnified after a horrific night of speed dating.

Then things change. Her dog dies. She’s tormented by a rat that shows up in her otherwise tidy house – a rat, by the way, that the exterminator doubts ever existed. She strikes up a budding friendship with the young guy Lloyd – played by Martin Starr – who cleans her pool. And she meets Bill, a wealthy divorcé played by the ever dependable Sam Elliott.

And just that fast, Carol sees that she might actually enjoy the time she has left.

If that all sounds a bit too pat, well, it would be – if writer-director Haley didn’t have a strict sense for the unpredictable. Just when you think you know where “I’ll See You in My Dreams” is going, Haley takes you in the opposite and – at least in one instance – shocking direction. Along the way, he takes his time, pacing his film patiently and giving us just enough character development to be intriguing while writing the kind of unforced dialogue that, in most cases, feels both artful and authentic.

Haley does insist on casting a trio of actresses – Mary Kay Place, Rhea Perlman and June Squibb – who seem straight out of a Casting 101 audition. And, at least to me, their “Golden Girls”-type moments bear all the stereotypes that the movie otherwise avoids.

“I’ll See You in My Dreams” has several moments that salvage it, though. The scene where Carol sings karaoke – showing that the former cabaret singer still knows how to manipulate a tune – is moving. Her moments with Bill feel as sexy as they do natural. Her tendency to waver around her daughter, well played by Malin Ackerman, might have you begging for more context. But her moments with Lloyd are everything they need to be.

The result is a film that portrays aging and elder emotion in a way that avoids most of the cheap jokes and clichés a less talented filmmaker would have reveled in – a film that Danner waited a lifetime to play but, when the opportunity came, played it as well as anyone could.