npr review
A Melancholy 'Welcome' For A Teen In Need
Proof positive that even the most shambling movie may be rescued by fine acting, Welcome to the Rileys is a defiantly cheery title for an achingly bleak story.
At first it seems impossible to contemplate spending more than five minutes with Doug Riley (James Gandolfini) and his wife, Lois (Melissa Leo). Frozen in the pain of losing their 15-year-old daughter eight years previously, the couple survives in a state of suspended animation. By day, Doug manages his plumbing business; one night a week, under cover of a regular poker game, he conducts a longstanding affair with an amiable pancake-house waitress (Eisa Davis). Lois, petrified by agoraphobia, skulks in their Indianapolis home along with their daughter's perfectly preserved bedroom.
Everything changes when Doug heads to New Orleans for a trade show and bumps up against Mallory (Kristen Stewart), a foul-mouthed stripper and occasional prostitute. A runaway of indeterminate years, Mallory lives in a crumbling rental with erratic utilities; when Doug proves uninterested in her sexual talents, she zeroes in on his sympathy and wallet. But Doug is experiencing a powerful dose of transference: He doesn't just want to help this creature, he wants to parent her.
As Doug repairs Mallory's plumbing, pays her parking fines and even cooks for her, Lois decides to overcome her disability and fetch her husband home. For a while, Ken Hixon's screenplay divides into parallel narratives as we follow Doug and Lois' separate but equally redemptive journeys, and it's here that the film gains traction and visual interest. Cinematographer Christopher Soos works best with stillness, his interior shots of the Rileys' gloomy home conveying a setting steeped in grief and, we later learn, guilt. A scene where Lois gets her hair done in the living room beautifully evokes the stasis of the woman, her marriage and her entire life.
Skip Bolen/Patti Perret/Samuel Goldwyn Films
Melissa Leo plays Lois Riley, who drags herself out of grief-induced isolation after Doug's growing focus on Mallory leaves Lois even more stranded than usual.
A creaky, sometimes forced drama that burrows under your skin if you let it, Welcome to the Rileys lurches along like Lois' car as she tries to exit her garage for the first time in years. Uplifting only in the most glancing way, it allows its emotional complexities to accumulate slowly, one conversation and image at a time. In an especially lovely scene, Lois wanders across the moonlit lawn of a roadside motel, ethereal in her white nightdress, while the camera draws up and back as though in awe of her newfound bravery.
Using atmospheric French Quarter locations, director Jake Scott brings life to a slow-moving tale that leans precariously on its three stars. Leo is as magnificent as always, but it's Gandolfini, drifting in and out of a variety of accents, who glues the film together. Effortlessly projecting an emotional need that's never creepy, he gives Doug's growing connection with Mallory a touching authenticity. Lois may buy the girl underwear and treat her "female problems," but Doug changes her life.
As for Stewart, her nuanced and mature grasp of this broken character is impressive. But after pouting and brooding through the Twilight franchise, we can only hope her next project gives her some reason to smile.
'Welcome to the Rileys' is poignant but uneven.
READ MORE AFTER THE JUMP
USA Today review
After all those years playing Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini knows his way around a stripper pole.
In Welcome to the Rileys, Gandolfini plays Doug Riley, a plumbing contractor who slips out of a New Orleans convention and pops into a seedy strip club. But this is no Bada Bing, and Doug is not there for a joy ride.
Like Tony, Doug is an emotionally shattered guy who has kept secrets from his wife (Melissa Leo). He also is a take-charge fixer, but not the kind who breaks kneecaps or orders hits.
In a way that happens only in the movies, Doug takes Mallory (Kristen Stewart), a 16-year-old stripper/hooker, under his wing. He sees in her a vague resemblance to the teenage daughter he lost in a tragic accident.
Doug repairs her filthy apartment, paying her for the privilege, and instructs Mallory to clean up her act, including fining her for every F-bomb she drops.
But Doug is no smug Henry Higgins, transforming a tough-talking urchin into a princess. He's a man trying desperately to outrun grief. Resisting her carnal overtures, Doug helps Mallory out of the goodness of his broken heart.
Welcome to the Rileys is an uneven venture. Exploring themes of trust and grief, it is powered by the strength of Gandolfini's and Leo's earnest performances and the moody atmosphere created by director Jake Scott. Leo and Gandolfini bring their characters to life poignantly. Despite their 30-year marriage, he cries alone in his garage and she marvels, unaccompanied, at the starry night sky she hasn't seen in years. But as a convincing tale, Rileys trips up. Gandolfini subtly conveys Doug's shaky emotional moorings. His only false note is an accent that inexplicably toggles between Midwestern and Southern.
Screenwriter Ken Hixon wisely does not transform Mallory's seamy world into sweetness and light when Doug and Lois come on the scene. But Stewart's one-note range is a stumbling block. She's almost always in foul-mouthed and ungrateful mode, so it's a stretch to imagine that this ordinary couple would be inspired to play surrogate parents.
Stewart's idea of inhabiting this part seems to be to scowl a lot and let her hair go unwashed. The Twilight star doesn't have the depth or emotional agility to go toe-to-toe with Gandolfini and Leo. She emerges as a wretched caricature.
Stories of loss and redemption are tough to pull off without resorting to contrivance or schmaltz. Welcome to the Rileys does manage to avoid sentimentality. But only two-thirds of this unlikely trio comes close to capturing the complexity of anguish and pain.
NYmag Review
In the press notes for Welcome to the Rileys, the seasoned music-video director Jake Scott—son of Ridley, nephew of Tony—says he has long been “interested in doing something quite real about ordinary people.” Yikes. When a style-conscious director talks like that, it usually means you can forget about grace or lyricism or anything that might interfere with the requisite quite-real ordinariness. But Scott’s stabs at drabness don’t undo the movie—it’s pretty good. Ken Hixon’s script contrives a lot of mutual-healing set pieces and then sadly but shrewdly aborts them: That makes the drama more Chekhovian than “quite real.”
James Gandolfini plays Indianapolis plumbing-supply-store owner Doug Riley with a gentle southern accent that’s not spot-on but changes his rhythms enough to make you see him with new eyes—and rediscover his soulfulness. Riley is sunk in grief over the death of his teenage daughter, although not nearly as low as his wife, Lois (Melissa Leo), who has put herself under house arrest. On a trip to a convention in New Orleans, he wanders into a club and meets a stripper (Kristen Stewart) who calls herself Mallory. Fleeing upstairs to avoid some drunken colleagues, he does the usual sad-older-man-meets-young-whore two-step (something like, “Do you want me to suck you off?” “No, can we just talk?” etc.). But maybe because over the years we’ve seen Gandolfini get so much head from strippers, his demurral here is poignant. And Stewart is a mess. She has oily hair and a complexion that either went to hell or was made to look as if it did. She also twitches every second. It’s almost too much, but judging from her sullen, visibly uncomfortable talk-show appearances, this might represent her emotional state better than Twilight’s goody-good Bella’s. Her rapport with Leo’s Lois, moved to join her wayward husband, has that mixture of tension and ease that puts across the mother-daughter vibe without pushing it. These people seem truly at sea, settling for glimmers of hope amid the crushing quite-realness.
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