Shared Darkness

Office Space, but his pitch-perfect,
average-guy pliability in that cult classic sealed the deal for me. Now,
courtesy of the new-to-DVD Relative
Strangers, comes the secret of his success. Says Livingston
on one of the disc’s extras, sitting next to his father, “I just usually try to
imagine how my dad would say something, and say it like that.” Brilliant!

Livingston plays Dr. Richard Clayton, an upward-trajectory
kind of guy for whom everything is coming up aces; he’s got a loving fiancée,
Ellen (Neve Campbell), two wonderful and supportive parents (Edward Hermann and
Christine Baranski), and a successful career as a psychiatrist, not to mention a
self-help book on anger management climbing the best-seller list. Everything in
his life is perfect, right on course — all until, that is, his jealous brother
(Bob Odenkirk) tells Richard in a moment of piqued anger that he was adopted.

Naturally, this stimulates Richard’s curiosity, and he hires
a private investigator to locate his birth parents, who turn out to be Frank
and Agnes Manure (Danny De Vito and Kathy Bates), a pair of perpetually jubilant
but crude and offensive carnies. The crude pair proceeds to make Richard’s life
miserable, from wrecking his relationships with friends and family to
sabotaging his career during a live television taping promoting his new book to
threatening to upend his approaching nuptials.

Directed by Greg Glienna, from a script co-written with Peter
Stass, Relative Strangers leans
heavily on its Meet the Parents roots
(Glienna having written, directed and starred in the 1992 version on which the 2000
Ben Stiller/Robert De Niro remake was based, and received story credit on that
film and its sequel). That means comedy rooted in the collision of the staid
and mannered with the willfully broad. So does Relative Strangers shock you with its transgressiveness or
originality of structure? No, not really. What it does have, though, is a bunch
of comedic heavy hitters doing some fine, fun character work. (Alongside the
aforementioned cast, Martin Mull and Beverly D’Angelo also appear.) De Vito has
an absolute blast as Frank; it’s good to see him back in mischievous top
form. Livingston, meanwhile, is a good, anchored guide through all of this mayhem.

DVD supplemental features consist of a nicely stitched
together, 13-minute on-set featurette, which includes plenty of cast and crew
interviews, plus Livingston jokingly talk about his joy at finally getting to
experience a “nut take” on film, in which his groin is the recipient of a giant
rubber-band ball. (In a zonked-out bit Mr.
Show fans will certainly appreciate, Odenkirk also speaks reverentially
about his first on-set sandwich.) In addition, there’s a five-minute segment
which highlights cast members’ recollections of their own parents, and it’s
here that Livingston palls around with his father. The
film clips within these segments are (rather strangely) rendered in horrible
quality, but the rest of the material is fine. Optional Spanish subtitles stand
alongside a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. B- (Movie) B (Disc)