Best Sellers
Screen Media FilmsDifficult characters form the core of Best Sellers, a feature that sees Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza team up on a strange odyssey of road-bound adventures. It is the pairing of two greats that makes Best Sellers so inviting. Caine and Plaza: the surprising pairing that provides a balanced case of cranky old writer and frustrated youth. A meeting of great minds finds two characters that neither want to be there or be around one another. Electric chemistry is the inevitable spanner in the works. The bond grows stronger, and as Best Sellers trundles on, it realises the real love between its two characters. Or at least it would if it had found the time to focus on the right emotive pockets and not the simplicity of a road trip movie.
Overshadowed by the will-he, won’t-he of retirement, this latest Caine feature will offer little in the way of ground-breaking qualities. Best Sellers has a strong performance from the veteran of the screen, who sets off to drain the audience of their love for him. His portrayal of Harris Shaw relies on the sympathy audiences should feel for the drinkers and the debutants. Caine has had some success with this role before in Educating Rita, but Best Sellers hasn’t the heart for a relationship that strong or pertinent. Instead, the feature drifts through, as does Shaw. Rather apt, but at times the lack of bite or fundamental change to the cries of alcoholism feels like a dead weight rather than an item that could explore the dynamic further.
A shame, too, since these characters are likeable. Plaza and Caine do well to remember that the twilight years road trip is, absolutely, one of reminiscent pain. Lina Roessler is adamant on those tones also, conducting Best Sellers with the same solid direction that has guided Caine and this acting troupe for years before. Consistency is all Best Sellers can offer, both in flawed, well-constructed characters and unmotivated scriptwriting that see these characters written off as parables, rather than people. But that is what they do best. Caine and Plaza steal the show, thankfully. Even they can transcend the miserably predictable dialect. The back and forth, the toing and froing of a meaningless relationship that will wither out before the credits roll, only for it to lurch back into the audience’s minds in some reminiscent pang of “he was alright in the end.”
That system works for Best Sellers, and if this is the sudden end to a fifty-year career, then the beauty of not making much of a fuss about Caine’s retirement will ring true. Best Sellers is not going to set the world on fire, but it is going to reap the rewards of consistency. A goal and redemptive arc are constructed, and the bumps along the way display an awakening in the ageing character as best as can be expected for a legend that teeters closer to the tender, twilight years. He has called time, allegedly. Christopher Nolan will wheel him out once more, naturally, but the hard work is done. Best Sellers is the final gasp of the super-focused spotlight for Caine, and it provides a fitting end even if it isn’t as up to scratch as his other features.