52 Films by Women Vol 9. 20. Goodrich (Director: Hallie Meyers-Shyer)
Los Angeles gallery
owner Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton), the protagonist of writer-director Hallie
Meyers-Shyer’s ‘bittersweet’ comedy drama, Goodrich, didn’t know
his wife Naomi (Laura Benanti) was addicted to prescription drugs. That’s the
improbable pill we are asked to swallow at the beginning of the film. Naomi calls
Andy to tell him not to freak out, but she’s checked into 90-day rehab. ‘And
I’m leaving you,’ she enunciates emphatically. Naturally, Andy does the ‘what
do you mean?’ schtick and the next day drives to ‘Happy Acres hush and flush’
or whatever the rehab centre is called and is told under no circumstances can
he see his betrothed. Andy is forced to be a real parent to his nine-year-old
twins, Billie (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Mose (Jacob Kopera) as well as to his
thirty-six-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, Grace (Mila Kunis), who
is married to a doctor and is expecting her first child. ‘He’s ears, nose and
throat,’ Andy notes dismissively in a line that approaches humour, as if that
somehow disqualifies him from the medical profession. His youngest children are
suitably precocious, Billie asking, ‘what’s rehab?’
Meyers-Shyer had a suitably Los Angeles upbringing, the daughter of Hollywood screenwriter-directors Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers. Her parents divorced, but not before mom Nancy named the characters in her 1998 remake of The Parent Trap after Hallie and her sister Annie. After a string of romantic comedies – What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, It’s Complicated and the non-romantic comedy, The Intern, Nancy Meyers priced herself out of the market, seeking $150 million for her as yet unmade project. Her daughter’s film is about gracefully bidding farewell to things and embracing the new. ‘You’re a grandfather,’ Andy is told in the climactic scene, news that appears to add several more lines to Michael Keaton’s face.
Meyers-Shyer’s thing is tension without confrontation. All Andy’s children know that he is a bad dad because he never checked the medicine cabinet and spent all day at work at the gallery he has owned for twenty-eight years but they never confront him about it. Andy’s latest artist has huge canvases that don’t sell, much like Nancy Meyers’ $150 million project. This means no commission. We don’t see Andy seeking out new artists or analysing the market. Mostly he has his hand under his chin. We are told that his financial situation has been steadily declining over the last seven months. He could be forced to sell the gallery.
What Andy is good at is reading obituaries. A noted African American artist has died and left her work to her daughter, Lola Thompson (Carmen Ejogo). Andy is the Los Angeles art world’s equivalent of an ambulance chaser and turns up for Lola’s female empowerment gig as the only male in the audience. He grins, which ought to creep out every woman sitting around him. He’s like Jack Nicholson’s stand-in in an ill-advised remake of The Witches of Eastwick. Afterwards, he quotes Lola’s mother back at her, which ought to be a red flag but isn’t.
As a pressed-into-service driver dad, Andy discovers that arriving at school after 08:00am means your kids get labelled ‘tardy’, unless they have a health condition. Andy makes friends with Terry (Michael Urie), a gay unemployed actor-single dad whose husband left him and whose son is epileptic. Terry’s kid can be late without reproach. Andy unburdens himself in front of this stranger. ‘You’re really easy to talk to,’ Andy tells Terry. You expect Terry to mouth, ‘help’.
Andy is the kind of gallery dad who forgets his children’s packed lunches and feeds them gluten. ‘Mum says gluten is bad for us,’ Billie points out, or is it Mose? They’re twins, their dialogue is interchangeable. ‘Gluten is delicious,’ Andy responds, dropping noodles down his throat. He gets mad with the kids when they use a remote-control drone in the house which knocks over a vase. ‘Who bought you that?’ he asks. ‘You and mom did,’ one of the twins replies. ‘Hand over the controls,’ he demands. They don’t. After the vase shatters, he asks them if they know how much it cost, since Billie knew where mom kept the salt and also that she took a lot of pills. ‘Is he thinking about the insurance claim?’ I asked myself.
Pictured: 'OK, who's going to be Warhol, and who's O'Keeffe?' Jacob Kopera, Michael Keaton and Vivien Lyra Blair in a scene from the Los Angeles-set comedy-drama, 'Goodrich', written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer. Still courtesy of Ketchup Entertainment (US), Rialto Distribution (Australia)
We half-expect Goodrich to turn into a romantic comedy. There are two possible interests. First, Terry, who is surprised when Andy treats his epileptic son to a Boba Fett Hallowe’en costume. Andy prefers to dress his son as Andy Warhol and daughter as Georgia O’Keeffe. They learn the hard way that pop culture characters get the most candy. After the kids share their haul, Andy pours Terry a glass of thirty-one-year-old whiskey. Accepting, Terry kisses him. Andy backs away. Terry is embarrassed. ‘Do I give off gay vibes?’ Andy asks, genuinely perplexed. He explains that his wife is in rehab, and his business is going down the tubes, so a gay kiss doesn’t faze him. Alas, all three children hear the admission.
Second is Lola, who agrees to let Andy market her late mother’s work. She invites Andy and Grace to a breathing class, which is the second big comedy set piece. In Los Angeles, wizened old people turn ordinary practices into exotic re-birth rituals, like breathing, drinking water, and using the crosswalk. Meyers-Shyer doesn’t satirise this. There is a random hiking interlude in which Andy takes his pregnant daughter high into the Hollywood hills, where presumably they can see expect to see forest fires in early January – the film is set between October and December. Andy and Grace almost bond, but Grace never quite expresses herself, except outside a hospital where after letting rip at the discomfort of watching her father be a caring parent to other children, having not experienced that during her childhood, her waters break.
Before then Andy takes his adult daughter shopping, and the film briefly becomes a promo for Bed Bath and Beyond, a business that happily survived the pandemic – everyone needs a beyond. Grace’s ENT doctor husband returns with food enough for two. (What about eating for the baby?) Andy makes his excuses and leaves.
The au pair, Tali (Noa Fisher) is ex-Israeli military and smokes outside the house. She is nominally a comedy character, though there is nothing funny about the Israeli military. ‘Answer the door,’ Andy requests, while on the phone – this is a guy who uses as handset whilst driving, which surely was illegal up until 2025. ‘What do you think I am doing,’ Tali replies, with military excuses. In another comedy scene, the kids seek permission to watch a PG-13 rated film. Andy refuses, but later shows them Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, a film that puts Billie to sleep faster than Gabby’s Playhouse. Andy explains to his son that the film is bitter-sweet, in what is commonly called foreshadowing. Although Lola loves family – Andy and Grace – she likes money more. ‘I’m fifty years old,’ she says by way of explanation for reneging on a deal after Andy had posters and a new sign for the gallery made, the latter costing $8,000.
Before his fall, Andy runs into his ex-wife (Andie MacDowell). They have a coffee together and reminisce over piano music that is in place of dialogue. On the way back, they run into her partner, an English duffer who explains they are going to New York before the baby is born, presumably to avoid designated driver duties. We also discover that Mose is allergic to peanuts, something else Andy didn’t know because he is too busy. At this point, we completely understand why Naomi needed one set of pills to sleep and another to stay awake. She always remembered to leave a glass of water at Billie’s bedside, since if she needed to take a pill while reading a bedtime story, there you go.
Pictured: Mila Kunis and Michael Keaton in a scene from the Los Angeles-set comedy-drama, 'Goodrich', written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer. Still courtesy of Ketchup Entertainment (US), Rialto Distribution (Australia).
For the most part, Goodrich is engaging, though Meyers-Shyer’s talent for dialogue is stretched in a hospital scene in which Andy starts crying as he realises that he has handed Grace over to her husband. Didn’t they have a wedding for that? ‘You’re my soulmate,’ he tells her as he goes for the final push, which has to be the oddest thing a screen dad has ever told his daughter, who is played by an actress associated with the Bad Moms franchise.
Equally embarrassing is Andy’s gallery farewell speech, with pictures of a young Michael Keaton projected behind him. We expect that Andy would talk about the painters whose careers were launched in the gallery, but he doesn’t. He goes for laughs instead. Keaton, who is associated with Mr Mom, underplays the leading role and majors on tolerance, forbearance and being interrupted by phone calls. Our sympathy for Andy is limited when we note that he has a pool.
Goodrich is at its best showing Los Angeles micro-aggressions, such as Terry blaming Andy for leading him on. ‘It was the whiskey.’ At no point do we see Andy investigate his wife’s stock of pills. They are a MacGuffin.
There have been better recent Los Angeles films that show the tensions of family life amongst those in the entertainment business, such as The Uninvited. Goodrich invites sympathy for a dad who never talks openly about money, frankly a fantasy figure. The film’s relatability takes a hit.
Reviewed on Amazon Prime, Sunday 14 September 2025
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