“She’s In Portland” Movie Review by Josh Davis : Pop Culture Leftovers

“She’s In Portland” Movie Review by Josh Davis

October 4, 2020 12:24 pm |

The notion of the midlife crisis and/or quarter-life crisis has been fodder for good and great movies for decades.

From Federico Fellini’s classic surrealistic take in “8 1/2,” to Sofia Coppola’s funny and melancholy “Lost in Translation,” or from “The Graduate” to “Garden State,” stories about stuck middle class men at a crossroads have inspired filmmakers and storytellers for generations.

Add “She’s in Portland” to the list of good, but probably not great, movies about such men.

Tommy Dewey, fantastic on the show “Casual” for playing a similarly “stuck” man in his early-to-mid 30s, here plays Wes, a stuck man perhaps in his late 30s.

He’s a successful venture capitalist who married young to Sarah (Minka Kelly of “Friday Night Lights” and “Titans”) and now has a young daughter. He’s also having an affair with a coworker, who was recently moved to another firm across the country because of their indiscretions.

Wes’s best friend, Luke (François Arnaud, “Blindspot,” “The Borgias”), edits music videos in Los Angeles and is romantically unencumbered.

Wes wants to be more like Luke — bohemian and freely able to date whoever he likes — while Luke dreams about having a stable job and a partner. He pines for “Maggie” (Nicole LaLiberte of “Twin Peaks” and “Dexter”), a girl he met and dated briefly in college.

When Luke doesn’t come to their college reunion — but Maggie does — Wes shows up at Luke’s apartment with a plan: they’ll take a road trip together to Portland, to help Luke reunite with Maggie. She’s asked about him, after all.

Wes plans the trek around a business trip, and he takes an envelope full of cash with him to avoid leaving a trail that his wife can follow. He’s essentially run away from home to live vicariously through his old friend, grasping at straws for some youthful fun because he feels old and, well, “stuck.”

Wes and Luke take the scenic route, a roughly 1,100-mile trip with planned stops along the way, and Wes buys a bright orange Ford Bronco he spots on the side of the road, to symbolically accentuate that he’s having a middle class, male crisis of some sort.

While on the road, they meet a pair of cute college girls and spend the day — and night — partying, because that’s what you do at that age. Wes sleeps in his car, but Luke spends the night with one of the girls.

A few days later, Wes and Luke meet two women maybe 10 years older than they are, and the foursome have dinner and talk and drink wine late into the night, because that’s what you do at that age?

It’s a twisted path to self discovery, but one that’s filled with gorgeous, cinematic shots of waterfront landscapes and plenty of beachy indie rock music to help accentuate the point.

Marc Carlini, who co-wrote the film, makes his feature film directorial debut here and lends a strong, steady hand behind the camera. He also gets decent mileage out of all his actors, although the dialog at times can be a little hackneyed.

Exhibit A, from an early scene at the reunion, where Wes and Maggie talk:

Maggie: “I’m a painter, which means I spend most of my time bartending.”

Wes: “Hey, [it] beats my concrete jungle.”

Dewey is expert at giving those kinds of lines subtly, substance and hints of dry humor, while others in the film succeed to varying degrees.

Eventually, things fall apart for Wes. He breaks off his long-standing affair, but later winds up in a dive bar with Luke getting drunk. Luke has the good sense to go to bed, but Wes hangs out with two tattooed barflies late into the night, goes to a hotel room with them, briefly has visions of his daughter while staring at himself in a bathroom mirror, and later wakes up on the floor of a hotel hallway, half naked and having apparently been robbed.

The movie reaches a climax when Wes finally realizes that he has to go home and face his wife and his family, while Luke has to decide whether to go back home and take a stable job with his brother, or continue alone on the journey to Portland, to try and win back the girl that got away.

“She’s in Portland” is beautiful to look at and well acted, but it’s ultimately a little lightweight on substance.

At least three times — and probably more — the central characters find themselves literally at a crossroads, trying to figure out what to do next. Movies don’t have to have all the answers — and this one certainly does not — but other films have done this story better.

Still, it’s a promising directorial debut by Carlini and further proof that Dewey handles quarter to mid-life crisis — and the awkward, sometimes melancholy comedy that comes with it — better than anyone.

PCL Rating: Taste It

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH 🍅