Living Out Loud - Through Pain

Protagonists. Every movie has them. They’re the people you root to win and to save the day. I should feel sympathetic to their situation. Living Out Loud, on the other hand, gives me protagonists that I have no reason to support. The characters are stale. The writing makes me want something more. Danny DeVito’s voice grates on my last nerve. The story is drawn out and leaves me questioning the purpose of the entire movie in the first place. It’s a good waste for an hour and a half of my time.

The story begins with Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter) having a midlife crisis because her husband, Bob (Martin Donovan) has cheated on her with a younger woman. Normally for a character like this, I’d feel sorry for her. I’d feel sorry about her marriage falling apart and the emotional torture that must be. But Judith doesn’t evoke these feelings in me whatsoever. She’s a medical nurse living in a ridiculously large apartment for the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She goes out to bars and daydreams about talking with strangers. Her life, albeit dull and predictable, isn’t bad.

Danny DeVito and Holly Hunter as a "romantic" couple

On the other hand, we have Pat Francato (DeVito). Pat is a gambler still trying to get out of debt, who also just happened to lose his daughter to cancer. Once again, normal circumstances would cause me to feel sorry for his character. He’s working a low paying job as the doorman in Judith’s apartment complex. But he’s also trying to turn his life around. Pat isn’t gambling, and isn’t trying to linger on his ex-wife or deceased daughter. He’s making money and has ideas for a new business with his cousins in Italy. My personal bias comes into play with Pat’s character, because I really cannot stand DeVito’s voice. There’s something about it that I find so grating and irritating. It’s a personal pet peeve that I tried to overlook for the character, but in the end just kept feeling more and more uncomfortable every time he came onscreen.

Our remaining main character is Liz Bailey (Queen Latifah), a singer at a club that Judith frequents, and a personal favorite artist of both Judith and Pat’s. The problem with Liz is that I’m still not quite sure what purpose she serves to the story. She is an added friend to the unusual social dynamic between Judith and Pat, and provides Judith with the Ecstasy for her dance number at a lesbian bar. The interactions between the three main characters are severely limited and don’t give me a sense of friendship, but more of camaraderie. They’ll moan and bitch about their “bad” lives, then go and drink their cares away. She doesn’t progress the story whatsoever.

Queen Latifah wasn't necessary to the plot.

The one redeeming factor of this movie is the way that it’s shot. Director Richard LaGravenese (now more commonly known for directing Freedom Writers and P.S. I Love You) manages to capture the little lapses in Judith’s sanity perfectly, so we’re wondering for a brief moment if she really did strike up a conversation with Liz, or if she really just get kissed by that random man in the back room of the club. It’s the little things to keep you on your toes when you’re losing concentration on the story.

All in all, Living Out Loud isn’t a movie that I’ll ever feel the need to watch again. There’s no story keeping me tied to the movie, nor are there any characters that I feel sympathetic for. At the end of the day, they’re not “living out loud” so much as “living sort of in the moment through pain”.