On The Rocks - Review 

Rating:  3.5 out of 5

SOFIA Coppola reunites with Bill Murray for the first time since Lost in Translation and once again provides the veteran star with a vehicle for his distinct charm.

On The Rocks may not carry as much emotional heft as their original partnership but it remains an emotionally engaging and deceptively poignant picture that also boasts another strong female co-lead in Rashida Jones.

The story centres on Jones’ late thirty-something struggling writer and mum Laura, whose mid-life creative block leads her to suspect that her successful husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) may be having an affair with one of his colleagues.

Encouraged to investigate further by her playboy father Felix (Murray), the two embark on several light capers designed to catch Dean in the act, while offering Felix the chance to hang out with the daughter he dotes on and would forever be beholden to.

Just as she did with Lost in Translation, Coppola takes loneliness as a starting point for an unlikely journey that’s by turns comical, insightful and moving. Laura, for instance, has found herself stuck in a ruck - a put upon mum struggling to find meaning and sometimes self-worth, who feels close to breaking point. She’s alone in her own marriage.

Felix, meanwhile, is a forever romantic - a man incapable of fidelity, who lives the high life (an ex-cop turned gallery owner), who travels and is driven around by a loyal chauffeur. He can’t resist flirting with practically every woman he meets - but you sense a similar longing for meaningful connection (on his terms) and a sense that his best days are perhaps behind him.

Admittedly, Coppola doesn’t probe as deep as she does with the somewhat more melancholy Translation, but there are moments here that recapture the sometimes haunting nature of her earlier masterwork… never more so than when Laura finally confronts her father over his decision to upend their family and leave his wife (her mum). There’s hurt and confusion, which is nicely played by both Jones and Murray.

But On The Rocks is certainly a lighter affair overall too, leaning more into the humour that also helped to make her first partnership with Murray so special. By doing so, the film certainly plays to his strengths.

A mid-film sequence in which Laura and Felix pursue Dean in a rickety sports car (surely a metaphor in itself for where Felix’s life is at) is a breezy delight, culminating in a wonderful exchange between Murray and the two police officers that eventually pull him over.

While a surveillance trip to Mexico also throws up some subtle comedy that allows Murray to showboat somewhat - while also recalling elements of George Clooney’s predicament in The Descendants.

The culmination of Laura and Felix’s sleuthing is also well realised - despite highlighting another of the film’s shortcomings: a rather under-developed role for Wayans as the husband.

On The Rocks might even have been better still had Dean been less passive and more mysterious. He could have added an extra layer of complexity.

As things stand, though, On The Rocks works as well as it does because of the undoubted charisma of Murray, whose performance here is mischievous, playful, lovably eccentric and somewhat sorrowful. His chemistry with a similarly formidable Jones hits all the right notes.

It also helps to ensure that On The Rocks makes for easy, comfortable viewing, as smoothly delivered as Murray’s own finely tuned charisma.