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Jerry and Marge Go Large review – Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening go small
A fact-based comedy about a couple who game the lottery has flashes of vicarious fun but relies too heavily on sitcom beats
There’s a whiff of the plane movie emanating from ho-hum Paramount+ comedy Jerry and Marge Go Large, an acceptable half-awake diversion when one has run out of other, better options in the sky but something that’s a little harder to justify on the ground. This week’s bounty of major streaming premieres – a charming remake of Father of the Bride, Joseph Kosinski’s stylish, if insubstantial, sci-fi thriller Spiderhead, Jennifer Lopez’s enjoyable if overly airbrushed pop star doc Halftime, Emma Thompson’s juiciest role for years in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, self-indulgent Sundance crowd-panderer Cha Cha Real Smooth, Amazon’s gay romcom My Fake Boyfriend – makes it a hugely, unusually competitive marketplace and there’s frankly no reason to pick this one above all else, a sitcom pilot masquerading as a real movie, Jerry and Marge going very small.
It’s a shame, as the article it was based on, Jason Fagone’s Huffington Post long-read, had character and heart, an investigation into a Michigan couple who found a way to game the lottery. But in the Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel’s adaptation, all idiosyncrasies have been flattened. It’s an added shame that Bryan Cranston and especially Annette Bening have been made similarly edgeless, two solid yet uninspired performances from two actors who deserve far more, playing overfamiliar types rather than real people. Cranston is, of course, Jerry, a tireless left-brain-first company man now facing the horror of retirement after working for the same factory for most of his life.
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