Ben Stiller and Austin Abrams in Brad’s Status.JWENK
Many of us will empathize with Brad, a middle-aged former journalist dutifully running a small not-for-profit in a second-tier city – and eaten alive with envy by the glamorous lives and million-dollar careers of his old college buddies. But do we really want to spend 100 minutes in his company as takes his teenage son on a tour of Harvard and inevitably learns what to value in life?
Ben Stiller does his damnedest to make the guy likeable and funny (and Austin Abrams stands out as his wise but laconic son).
Of course, this is social satire and some bits are very funny – particularly when Brad fantasizes about his friends' island getaways, corporate jets and blond families or when Michael Sheen throws his best slime ball as an enviable media personality – but the message is too obvious and the humour too gentle for the whole affair not to feel like so much white-male whining.