Robin Williams was initially the frontrunner for the starring role in director Phil Alden Robinson’s Field of Dreams, so perhaps, 25 years later, The Angriest Man in Brooklyn represents some sort of karmic closure for that collaboration that never was. It certainly doesn’t connect on any other level. A flaky, contrived and wearying dramedy in which a dying man (Williams) frantically tries to right the fractured relationships in his life while an equally frazzled doctor (Mila Kunis) tries to track him down in order to clarify the reading of his diagnosis, this clamorous offering — a remake of the 1997 Israeli film The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum — fails to elicit much in the way of either laughs or sympathy. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn could be shot through with frustration and rage and still possess the sort of subtlety that would lend it a real-world rootedness. But screenwriter Daniel Taplitz’s adaptation is thinly imagined, and lacking enough of the sort of quiet moments that would lend these characters much-needed dimensionality. Robinson, meanwhile, seems only too happy to let his actors lean on histrionics. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 84 minutes)
« Forev