You Can Count on Me (2000)

I'm pretty sure this used to be on IMDb’s top 250; that's most likely how I took notice of it. Nowadays it stands out as having the first major role for Rory Culkin. It's also the earliest I've seen of Mark Ruffalo and the latest I've seen of Matthew Broderick.

The opening establishes Samantha and Terry as having been orphaned when Sammy was a teen and Terry a bit younger. After a fast-forward, Sammy (Laura Linney) is a single mother of eight-year-old Rudy (Culkin). Her new boss at the bank (Broderick) is not very sympathetic to her need to leave early. But as luck would have it, Terry (Ruffalo) shows up just in time…to ask for money. Sammy makes him feel guilty for not replying to her letters for six months, so he agrees to stick around and help take care of his nephew. As you can imagine, the title is ironic.

Frankly, the opening, tho often credited as powerful, is so awkward in the gestalt that I would've cut it altogether. It shows us little of the characters' early lives. As far as I can tell, it matters to the rest of the story only insofar as it explains why Sammy cares about Terry so much. I do not take it to explain their future personalities, which hardly developed in the same direction. Adding to the awkwardness, there appears to be a third sibling who never rates a mention again, unless that's just a visiting friend. Either way, his sole purpose is to allow for a brief exchange with Terry indicating that teen Sammy smokes weed. Yeah, that tells us a lot.

But enough about those first few minutes. The rest of the movie is dominated by Terry being a rather lousy manchild. (Mom, if you still have a crush on Ruffalo, don’t watch this.) Rudy mostly likes him, probably for treating him almost like an adult, but you can imagine some of the trouble that causes. Prepare for plenty of swearing, which thankfully doesn't rub off on Rudy. Terry even smokes right next to him in the bedroom at night.

To the fairly religious Sammy, this behavior is hard to tolerate. She does have her own vices, most obviously when she violates a commandment with her boss, which Terry will gladly throw in her face when she gets on his case. The titular irony might apply to both of them. But if we're to understand that they're anywhere close to equally bad authority figures, writer-director Kenneth Lonergan fails on that part. At least Sammy keeps her problems a secret from Rudy, so she's probably not a bad influence on him.

The film succeeds most in credibility, convenient timing notwithstanding. Not only can I believe what happens on the whole, but the dialog features plenty of mid-sentence pauses as if the characters improvised. And they face emotional communication issues that I rarely see handled on screen, in a way that I might just accept as about equal in fault distribution.

I'm not sure what year the bulk of the story takes place. The bank's computers evoke the '80s or early '90s, but it's just possible that a minor bank in a backwater town would still use them in 2000. That present does feel surprisingly old now; a lot of moments wouldn't have happened in the era of omnipresent cellphones.

It's impressive for a first directorial effort, but my verdict is a mere "OK." Just one of those moderately intense dramas that shouldn't really change your perspective on the ways of the world. Once in a while, it tries to be funny, but I for one prefer the combination of bleak and hilarious found in Nebraska. Not that I could expect much better from a notoriously lame year for serious movies in general.