REVIEWED - JUNEBUG: The comedy cliches of meeting the in-laws are neatly avoided in this serious comedy, writes Michael Dwyer
THE culture clash when in-laws meet for the first time has been a comic staple in movies from Father of the Bride and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (and their remakes) to The Birdcage and Meet the Parents. Consequently, we are primed to expect conflict when a sophisticated, well-travelled Chicago art dealer pays her first visit to her husband's rural North Carolina home in Junebug.
When we first see Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), she is holding an art auction as a benefit for Jesse Jackson's re-election campaign. She marries George (Alessandro Nivola) after a whirlwind romance, and when she decides to woo an eccentric southern folk artist who happens to live near her husband's hometown, Madeleine and George agree to spend a few days with his family.
George's mother (Celia Weston) adores him, but is less than welcoming to his wife, while his father (Scott Wilson) hides away, inventing things to do in his basement workshop. His younger brother, Johnny (Ben McKenzie from The OC) is surly, lazy and resentful of his brother's success. Johnny's wife, his high school sweetheart Ashley (Amy Adams), is expecting their first child any day, and he would prefer to avoid this impending responsibility.
Happily, what appears to be yet another calculatedly quirky comic set-up soon dissolves into an astutely observed serious comedy layered with telling details and grounded in a recognisable reality. The screenplay by playwright Angus MacLachlan is strewn with memorable dialogue - as when Madeleine asks Johnny if he found Huckleberry Finn funny and he says, "I found it long", or when Ashley touchingly tells Johnny, "God loves you just the way you are, but He loves you too much to let you stay that way."
One of the many refreshing aspects of Junebug is how honestly and fairly it views and treats all its characters, never patronising or sneering at them, with the result that our sympathies shift throughout this endearing, bittersweet movie.
It helps that its director, Phil Morrison, can draw on the experiences of both sides, having been born and raised in North Carolina, moving into the cosmopolitan world of directing commercials and music videos before making his cinema debut here.
Accompanied by a pleasing, unobtrusive Yo La Tengo score, his film is performed with grace, wit and a welcome absence of overstatement. In the strong ensemble cast, Amy Adams (the nurse who fell for Leonardo DiCaprio's impostor in Catch Me If You Can) is irresistibly warm and endearing, and she well deserved the Oscar nomination she received for Junebug this year.
