Fantasy Life

Grade: B

In Fantasy Life, art imitates life in at least a couple of ways. Amanda Peet plays an actress who had some nice success in a handful of projects in the early aughts, but couldn’t quite maintain that peak and faded into lesser seen territory – much like Peet herself. I know her from The Whole Nine Yards, Whipped, Saving Silverman, Identity, and another one that I’ll talk about in a minute. She never left. She kept working. It’s great to see her again, and she brings a lot to this movie.

She’s not the main character, or the first one we meet. Its focus is on the journey of Sam Stein, played by writer/director Matthew Shear. The movie begins with him being let go from his job, in a scene that shows us just enough to know what’s going on without beating it over our heads. His long-time psychiatrist (Judd Hirsch) doesn’t think it’s too much of a conflict of interest – and maybe it isn’t – to have him be a nanny, or a “manny,” as some characters call it, to his three granddaughters.

The three girls’ parents are played by Alessandro Nivola and Peet. He is a bass player who just got recruited for a tour with Warren Haynes’s band, so he will be away. Sam has had a crush on Peet’s character, and has seen all of her movies, even the obscure ones that make her embarrassed and surprised when he brings up that he saw them. She has had some frustrations with her husband, particularly when he comes back home, but partakes in intoxicants like he’s still on the road. The grass is looking greener, and explorations of what might be, with Sam, play out, or almost play out but don’t – in ways that are more thoughtful and original than it may sound.

This is Shear’s debut as a writer/director, though his previous acting credits include Old, Marriage Story, and Between the Temples. The latter movie had Jason Schwartzman in a May/December romance with Carol Kane, set to a Judaism backdrop – all similar to what goes on here in Fantasy Life. I wonder what inspiration, if any, Shear drew from his work on Between the Temples. The ensemble, which also includes Andrea Martin and Bob Balaban, is a veritable forshpayz of familiar and unknown faces, all equally coming together to ably drive the train.

Throughout the movie, I struggled to find a genre or vibe to hook onto. It tries out a few formulas, not knowing what it wants to be. It does the Fablemans/Between the Temples thing, then sometimes it’s a family drama like Once Around or A Little Prayer, then at other points it veers into “slice of life” territory, like You Can Count on Me or The Kids Are All Right. Eventually, it gets tiresome to pin it down, and you realize you don’t really have to. Just appreciate that moment to moment, it works.

I clocked another Peet parallel. In 2002’s Changing Lanes, already a great movie, she steals the show with one scene, lasting less than 10 minutes. In it, she sits opposite her husband (played by Ben Affleck) at a diner, and has a marvelous speech that digs deeper than your traditional Hollywood dialogue. People loved her, and though it didn’t ultimately happen, I heard rumblings about a hopeful Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Peet.

Her diner booth acting is put to effective use again here, as she has at least one such meaningful scene, including at the end. Fantasy Life has lots of influences amongst its ingredients, and I was wondering where it would land, but it ultimately does so in a nice place. This is a rich ensemble that comes together to do top-notch work – from the ones we’ve never heard of, the ones we’ve seen before, and the ones we’re seeing for the first time in a while.

Grade: B