Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner's Why Stop Now is an energetic comedy that could've been called its tagline, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Rehab," just for added effect. It concerns a piano prodigy who gets caught up with his mother's drug dealers while trying to take her to rehab so he can finally live a life free of this albatross.
The prodigy is Eli Bloom and is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who couldn't be a better fit here. His mother is played by Melissa Leo, and equally great casting choice as well. The film begins with Eli getting drunk at a party the night before a big audition at a music conservatory before he goes up to sleep all of it off. The next morning he tries to admit his mother to rehab for drugs but she can't be accepted due to the lack of drugs in her system. The rehab employee encourages her to go get high and then come back so that her urine sample can come up dirty.
This leads to Eli and his mom seeking out "Sprinkles" (Tracy Morgan) and Black (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), two helpless drug-dealers that will give them the fix they need. But because Eli's mom owes them money, they must fulfill a favor, all while Eli has a stern deadline and a long road trip ahead of him to the audition.
Movies like this, while not usually emphasizing on dialog, tend to make me admire the ways directors and writers conduct eventful plots and briskly-paced scenes of raucousness. Dorling and Nyswaner deliver in this respect because they know that it's not the situations that are usually funny but it's the characters that are victim to them. They know we've likely seen Eisenberg, Leo, and Morgan in other movies, some of them more serious, so to throw them all together in a cacophony of chaos such as drug deals, misunderstanding, and so on makes this a very lighthearted, fun film to watch.
Why Stop Now erects a film on the building blocks of comedy. Think about it; many comedies form as a result of characters doing something they do not want to do. If Eli had it his way, his mother would be in rehab, his little sister would be in a safer haven than she is now, and he'd be on his way his audition. Of course, there would be no excitement and, worse, we could get a depressing, inept road movie rather than the spirited screwball comedy we have here. Movies like this embrace something that will never cease to at least captivate me and that's the cheery sense of excitement and exhilaration in high-octane sequences of madness.
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Melissa Leo, Tracy Morgan, and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. Directed by: Paul Dorling and Ron Nyswaner.
The prodigy is Eli Bloom and is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who couldn't be a better fit here. His mother is played by Melissa Leo, and equally great casting choice as well. The film begins with Eli getting drunk at a party the night before a big audition at a music conservatory before he goes up to sleep all of it off. The next morning he tries to admit his mother to rehab for drugs but she can't be accepted due to the lack of drugs in her system. The rehab employee encourages her to go get high and then come back so that her urine sample can come up dirty.
This leads to Eli and his mom seeking out "Sprinkles" (Tracy Morgan) and Black (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), two helpless drug-dealers that will give them the fix they need. But because Eli's mom owes them money, they must fulfill a favor, all while Eli has a stern deadline and a long road trip ahead of him to the audition.
Movies like this, while not usually emphasizing on dialog, tend to make me admire the ways directors and writers conduct eventful plots and briskly-paced scenes of raucousness. Dorling and Nyswaner deliver in this respect because they know that it's not the situations that are usually funny but it's the characters that are victim to them. They know we've likely seen Eisenberg, Leo, and Morgan in other movies, some of them more serious, so to throw them all together in a cacophony of chaos such as drug deals, misunderstanding, and so on makes this a very lighthearted, fun film to watch.
Why Stop Now erects a film on the building blocks of comedy. Think about it; many comedies form as a result of characters doing something they do not want to do. If Eli had it his way, his mother would be in rehab, his little sister would be in a safer haven than she is now, and he'd be on his way his audition. Of course, there would be no excitement and, worse, we could get a depressing, inept road movie rather than the spirited screwball comedy we have here. Movies like this embrace something that will never cease to at least captivate me and that's the cheery sense of excitement and exhilaration in high-octane sequences of madness.
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Melissa Leo, Tracy Morgan, and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. Directed by: Paul Dorling and Ron Nyswaner.