The Judge

The Judge is a hodgepodge of movie genres. It’s a courtroom drama, a dysfunctional family comedy, a legal thriller potboiler, and an estranged father/son melodrama, with shades of the lowbrow, scatological, sex-farces we associate with the film’s director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers, The Change-Up). Unfortunately, it contains all the clichés of each style but lacks the more enjoyable aspects we expect from these genres.  It’s one of those Hollywood films that tries to be everything to every demographic and fails at sufficiently satisfying anyone. While not an unwatchable picture, The Judge is frustrating viewing. The cast is strong but the characters are uninvolving. Certain individual scenes are well written and compelling but they don’t connect or build on each other. 

Robert Downey, Jr. plays a hotshot lawyer who returns to his small hometown to defend his father, the town Judge, in a murder trial. Robert Duvall plays the judge/father. Vincent D'Onofrio and Jeremy Strong play the less-successful brothers. Billy Bob Thornton is the prosecutor Downey must face-off against. Vera Farmiga is the sexy ex-girlfriend who never left town. These are all great actors in roles that show off their strengths, but each character feels oddly underdeveloped--even though as you watch the film you can tangibly sense the number of script rewrites that went into beefing up each part. The film’s biggest problem is Downey. He’s a great actor but he never stretches beyond the fast-talking, cocksure, arrogant yet lovable character he always plays. I can’t remember the last time I saw this actor take a risk on screen or play a character with any genuine vulnerability. Maybe that’s fine for the Iron Man franchise but it’s not enough for a movie like The Judge. The brilliant, conceited, misanthropic lawyer who must dig deep to find his soul is not a difficult role for a good-looking male movie star--that’s why we get so many films about guys like this. Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, John Travolta, and (the master of this trope) Tom Cruise know how to play these characters with just the right amount of humanity shining through their attractive but untouchable exteriors. Downey should be able to pull this off, but he seems unwilling to make the effort.

Duvall fares better in the secondary (and less-well written) role. He’s able to find ways to make a stock character (the insensitive authoritarian dad) credible and distinctive. For every hackneyed line of dialogue he finds an authentic bit of behavior that redeems his scenes. At age 83, Duvall shows no signs of slowing down--it’s rare to see an old person played by an actor several years older than the character, it’s usually the other way around.

This overstuffed picture wears out its welcome, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours without telling an especially complicated tale.  We leave The Judge asking, “is that really all there is to this story?”