| Middle Life is a mid-life crisis rom-com from Canadian filmmaker Pavan Moondi. Andie (Leah Fay Goldstein) is in her mid-30s, married, has a baby at home and is struggling to get back to work as a wedding planner. She doesn’t like work much anymore but that’s because she’s not busy after having taken off more than a year to have and raise her baby. She doesn’t like her husband much anymore since the baby didn’t seem to disrupt his life the way it did hers. She’s not happy so she’s just going to sit around a complain instead of changing anything. | | 2025
Directed by: Pavan Moondi
Screenplay by: Pavan Moondi
Starring: Leah Fay Goldstein, Peter Dreimanis
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Meanwhile Ryan (Peter Dreimanis) is driving home with his father, talking about making better choices but then speeding home because he urgently needs to pee. He’s in a serious car accident that miraculously didn’t kill them probably because Andie was on the scene quickly, called 911 and stayed with them making sure things didn’t get worse before the paramedics got there. It’s bold to make that the meet-cute.
There are also weird, bold choices all over this movie. For starters we have an opening credits font and filming style straight out of a 70s sit-com. I kept having to remind myself that they have cell phones, this is supposed to be set in modern times even though it doesn’t look it at all. This is also not helped by an over-done score, which is often inappropriately loud and doesn’t fit the movie. Then again, everything about this movie is not subtle, so in some ways it does fit.
There is a running theme - (I would like to say joke, but it’s too inappropriately put together to be funny) – about toilets and peeing. Ryan is a plumber who fixes toilets and installs bidets. He also has a medical condition where he needs to pee but can’t and is then in considerable pain. And yes, this comes up frequently. The movie doesn’t give the reason until near the end; arguably the audience should be able to figure it out, but it would have been better if the doctor had appeared earlier. Ryan saying the doctors don’t know, doesn’t tell us much since Ryan isn’t particularly smart or upfront (he doesn’t lie but he also doesn’t think things through).
The characters are unique which is certainly better than boring for a romantic comedy, but the movie makes so many strange tonal shifts it’s hard to be invested. I like Ryan because I can understand him, his character approaches life in logical ways. Andie at least has some good one-liners and occasional metaphors, like when she compared Ryan to a metal hook at the back of garbage trucks which picks up garbage cans and compared herself to the garbage can, and she meant that as a good thing. But when Andie gets upset, she gets very shrill and every other bad decision gets magnified.
Middle Life has a very deliberate style, but it’s hard to see that as a good style or especially a fitting style. But in line with its main characters, let me make a bizarre and uncomfortable metaphor: the movie is like the opening car crash, you go to help it, but it caused the crash all on its own, and all you can do is slowly watch hoping it gets better.
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