Everybody wears such great sweaters.
Those wine goblets are always full.
And the kitchens! Such nice kitchens.
Too bad they’re all so miserable.
Writer-director-star Edward Burns’ siblings drama “Millers in Marriage” has a bit of a Production Design Porn look combined with peak Woody Allen film relationships, as we settle in for a comfort viewing experience of watching privileged and good-looking 50ish people try to figure out the now-what? phases of their lives.
There are moments when you wish they’d all take a step back and realize how soft and sweet they have it and stop complaining, but Burns has always been a filmmaker with a knowing sense of relationships and a keen ear for authentic dialogue. While these folks aren’t always the most pleasant to be around, we understand them and can relate to them, and at times feel empathy for their predicaments. Just because you don’t have to worry about paying the bills doesn’t mean you’re gliding through life on 400-thread-count sheets.
Burns still has the leading-man presence of a guy’s guy who could fix your kitchen sink and then take you to a romantic dinner, and he’s in his comfort zone as Andy Miller, an artist who was dumped by his tempestuous wife Tina (Morena Baccarin) after 15 years of what he thought was a sold marriage. Andy has struck up a promising relationship with Minnie Driver’s Renee and they seem to have a real shot at a lasting romance — but Tina keeps showing up at the most inopportune times, blowing up Andy’s phone as she suddenly finds Andy interesting and desirable again. (Driver’s Renee is such the complete package that we want Andy to wake up and block Tina from texting him.)
Gretchen Mol, doing her finest work since “Boardwalk Empire,” plays Andy’s sister Eve, who had a quick splash as the lead singer for an indie rock band in the 1990s but gave up her career after she became pregnant with her husband Scott (Patrick Wilson), a successful band manager with a substance intake problem who disappears for days at a time before coming home to get loaded and verbally abuse Eve. At least Eve is finding a bit of spark in life as she contemplates getting involved with Benjamin Bratt’s music journalist, who wears a ridiculous hat and is writing a book about the 1990s music scene and was once a writer for Spin magazine.
The third Miller sibling, Maggie (Julianna Margulies), is a popular novelist who churns out juicy fiction about people with “champagne problems,” while Maggie’s husband Nick (Campbell Scott) is a far more serious author who hasn’t done any real writing in a long time and resents his wife’s success.
These Miller siblings are all artistically inclined, and they all picked some spouses who might have once been wonderful but are now toxic, and “Millers in Marriage” is all about how one navigates the second extended act of one’s adult life. Judging by what we witness onscreen, “Millers in Divorce” would seem to be the best path for all three.