Brad’s Status review: A rueful, melancholy comedy
MEASURING your failings against the successes of others is a recipe for misery in Brad’s Status, a rueful, melancholy comedy about growing older and confronting the roads untravelled.
Ben Stiller is well cast as Brad Sloan
Ben Stiller is well cast as Brad Sloan, an outwardly successful family man eaten away by insecurity, self-loathing and obsessive envy of high-flying friends such as Hollywood hotshot Nick (the film’s director Mike White) and TV pundit Craig Fisher (Michael Sheen).
His worries intensify during a trip to Boston, touring prospective colleges with his son Troy (Austin Abrams).
Brad is a neurotic, self-indulgent but ultimately sympathetic figure who embodies worries we all have: the pang of jealousy over a friend who seems to have it all; regret at not having achieved more; the feeling that you made all the wrong choices.
A few characters have little time for Brad’s self-pity and you may feel the same.
But the film is often perceptive and funny as it explores one man’s existential crisis.