‘Brad’s Status’ is one of insatiable self-doubt

"Brad's Status" is writer-director Mike White's look into the life of a guy who seemingly has everything — but can't escape the feeling that it simply isn't enough. Following is the review of the film that I wrote for Spokane Public Radio:

It’s hard to empathize with Brad Sloan. He seems to have pretty much everything – a career that stresses goodwill over mere financial reward, a loving and supportive wife, and a son smart and talented enough to quality for admission to Harvard.

Yet Brad is troubled. While accompanying his son on a visit to Harvard, among other potential colleges, he struggles to sleep. As happens to many of us, particularly when we hit middle age, Brad has regrets. Plagued by thoughts of his college buddies, at least three of whom seem to have more fame and riches than the average person can even imagine possessing, Brad wonders if he hasn’t sold himself short.

Was his wife too accepting of him, tempting him to settle for mediocrity? Will he be able to handle his son’s success if it somehow outshines his own accomplishments? What is wrong with him, anyway?

Good questions all. As for that last one, most of us would say nothing, except for his anguish over emotions that are little more than self-absorbed, ultimately self-defeating fantasies. Fantasies, by the way – as one of his son’s former schoolmates tells him – that are more a reflection of his privileged place in the world than anything else.

After all, what he has is better than the vast majority of the world’s population. His truly are, to use a popular term, first-world problems.

But, he insists, “This is my life.” Right, we might agree. So why not appreciate it?

That seems to be the point that writer-director Mike White is trying to emphasize with his film, which h titles simply enough, “Brad’s Status.” White, whose screenwriting career betrays a wide range of themes and tones – from the merely entertaining “School of Rock” to the issue-oriented “Beatriz at Dinner” – is inordinately kind to Brad. In any event, he doesn’t mock him. Maybe that’s because White himself is the exact age, 47, as that of his protagonist. And, maybe, he has come to understand that age – sometimes in the middle of the night – brings with it a nearly insistent sense that things could have, might have, been better had we made different choices. If we had, as Thoreau wrote, stepped to the beat of a different drummer.

What is clear is that White understands someone like Brad, captured so well by the actor Ben Stiller who himself has portrayed a range of characters, from the farcically outlandish Derek Zoolander to the self-destructive Jerry Stahl of the 1998 film “Permanent Midnight.” White also understands Brad’s son Troy, underplayed to perfection by newcomer Austin Abrams, whose obvious love for his father adds just another complicated layer to Brad’s emotional crisis.

And, too, White understands that such feelings are, for most of us, fleeting – the kinds of emotions that we entertain, then either ignore, forget or simply laugh off.

It takes Brad a while longer. And he puts himself, his son and us – the movie audience – through more than a bit of emotional torment along the way. Until he, in White’s capable filmmaking hands, finds a way to resolutely update his status.