Just Getting Started (2017)
(On Cable TV, May 2019) There is, buried somewhere in Just Getting Started, everything required for a serviceable comedy. Nothing too ambitious, nothing too difficult, just the basic elements of a film you see, enjoy, perhaps recommend to friends and family. It’s a comedy set in a retirement home, with capable actors such as Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones and Rene Russo, with a little mix of mob-driven action and old-person comedy. Heaven knows that there’s a small list of those movies already. But this is not the film that Just Getting Started is now. Because what we’ve got here is a waste of everyone’s time and talent, a mixture of juvenile gags that feel worse when played by retirement-age actors. The romantic rivalry between the two male leads is wholly manufactured (and then quickly dismissed) and while there’s some fun in seeing Jones strut and wager through a character created to be perfect, the film doesn’t know what to do with the energy of his performance. Neither can it find a good place for Russo, nor make the most out of Freeman’s comedy. The cinematography is uneven, at times making good use of its southwestern scenery and at other being nothing more than flat comedy-grade images. Just Getting Started often stops and sputters, occasionally stumbling upon a good idea but never completely going to the fullest extent. What a shame. Fortunately, there are other similar movies that succeed much better.