I Melt with You was one of the most controversial films of 2011, directed by Mark Pellington and starring Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, Rob Lowe, Christian McKay, Carla Gugino, Tom Bower, Arielle Kebbel, Sasha Grey. Isabelle Pellington, Melora Hardin. Before moving on to the critique, let’s briefly summarize the subject of the 2011 film.
Richard (Thomas Jane), Ron (Jeremy Piven), Tim (Christian McKay), and Jonathan (Rob Lowe) are friends from college who gather for a weekend each year to celebrate their friendship and catch up with each other.
On the surface, they look like other men going through life: they have careers and families and responsibilities. But as with many people, there is more to them than meets the eye. As the weekend progresses, they go down the rabbit hole of excess. Fueled by sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, their bacchanalian reunion drives them to an unexpected place where they are forced to confront themselves and the choices they’ve made.
Men desperately seeking binges of self-destructive excess dominate screens so much already that “I Melt With You” initially feels like the umpteenth episode of a mysteriously long-running television series.
It even stars a handful of now-TV faces — Thomas Jane (“Hung”), Jeremy Piven (“Entourage”), Rob Lowe (“Parks and Recreation”) — who along with Christian McKay play longtime buddies in their 40s who meet annually to drink, inhale, pop and snort a battery of illegal substances at a rented hillside manor by the sea.
But their responsibility-averting bacchanal is really just music video-stylized window dressing for a loony tune of wallowing self-pity about busted promises that writer Glenn Porter and director Mark Pellington mistakenly believe is psychedelic psychodrama of the highest order.
The unintended message oozing from Jane’s bitter novelist, Lowe’s divorced doctor, Piven’s corrupt investment banker and McKay’s broken romantic — all performances committed to anything but an ounce of empathy — is that vows to oneself made when young and stupidly idealistic are wonderfully convenient escape hatches when life goes south.
A fanfare for the common jerk that taints every ‘80s-era alt-rock soundtrack tune it touches, “I Melt With You” assuredly marks itself as one of 2011’s most ludicrous releases.
All about I Melt with You movie.
I Melt with You (2011)
Directed by: Mark Pellington
Starring: Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, Rob Lowe, Christian McKay, Carla Gugino, Tom Bower, Arielle Kebbel, Sasha Grey. Isabelle Pellington, Melora Hardin
Screenplay by: Glenn Porter
Production Design by: Ian Sebastian Kasnoff
Cinematography by: Eric Schmidt
Film Editing by: Don Broida
Costume Design by: Patia Prouty
MPAA Rating: R for pervasive drug use and language, some violence and sexual content.
Music by: tomandandy
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: December 9, 2011
Visits: 60
