Young Lerman is My One and Only
Loosely inspired by the life of actor George Hamilton, British director Richard Loncraine’s (Wimbledon, Firewall) new coming of age drama My One and Only is perfectly pleasing on a multitude of levels. It has a smoothly intoxicating style and never overplays its hand. Better, it doesn’t drip in maudlin melodrama, its emotional undercurrents happening with an almost effortless believability that’s tastily refreshing.
Mark Rendall, Renée Zellweger and Logan Lerman in Freestyle Releasing's My One and Only
On the minus side, the film takes a little while to get going. Its opening New York moments are particularly bumpy, much of the humor forced and not even slightly enchanting. Oscar-winning actress Renée Zellweger feels all wrong in the main role as headstrong mother Anne Deveraux, while the usually reliable Kevin Bacon is more cartoon than man as her bandleader husband Dan sporting an accent so misbegotten just thinking about it starts to make my skin crawl.
Thankfully Loncraine and company dig themselves out of their early hole with surprising ease, and by the time Anne is trying to romance militaristic disciplinarian Dr. Harlan Williams (Chris Noth) in order to find some sort of wealthy stability for herself and her two sons George (Logan Lerman) and Robbie (Mark Rendall) my early reservations started to evaporate. Zellweger begins to ease into her character, giving her a backbone and a maturity the early scenes didn’t allude to, while relative newcomer Lerman (so good in 3:10 to Yuma) starts to dominate the movie in a way that completely surprised me.
He ends up being the main reason this film is ultimately well worth searching out. While character actors like Noth, Troy Garity, Eric McCormack, Nick Stahl , Steven Weber and a marvelously funny David Koechner pop up as a wild collection of potential suitors, and while Zellweger is the headlining star, it is Lerman who makes the movie what it is. He avoids all the usual clichés where it comes to playing George, the youngster mining all of the intricacies in writer Charlie Peters’ (3 Men and a Little Lady) decently layered screenplay with the ease of a seasoned veteran.
I especially liked his work right around the third act turn. He has a scene with Zellweger outside her sister’s home that’s shockingly good, both actors playing off one another beautifully. Neither overdoes it, going for restraint where others might turn towards bombast, a beguiling simplicity hammering home the inherent heartfelt drama of the situation far more eloquently than over-the-top caterwauling ever could have. Lerman almost can’t help but dominate, and while Zellweger is the one trying to hold back tears onscreen it is he who ends up generating them from the audience off of it.
It’s hard not to wish the movie was a smoother affair and didn’t overstay its welcome a bit during a detour to Pittsburgh. It is also impossible not to notice that the first ten minutes border on the insufferable or that Bacon never seems to be fully invested in the proceedings to make his climactic reintroduction during the finale even minutely interesting.
But thanks to the Lerman, and to a somewhat lesser extent Zellweger, things never go too far off-track. Loncraine manages to steer around the more annoying potholes lingering along the avenues of Peters’ script, and by the time the film got to Los Angeles I was pretty much willing to let it drive off the road completely and still admit to having a fairly decent time. My One and Only isn’t an award-winner and it isn’t a movie I’ll remember too far into the future but it is one that when I do I’m positive I’ll smile, and as far as cross-country melodramas go I’d happily honk my horn for this one every day of the week.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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