Review: An Actor Prepares

An Actor Prepares is a painfully by-the-numbers and pedestrian comedy drama that is somewhat redeemed by Jeremy Irons' exuberant performance. As the seventy-year-old, three-time Oscar winner Atticus Smith, star of such esteemed fare as Starry Night (where he essayed the role of Vincent Van Gogh) and the less serious work like Cops and Slobbers (a Turner & Hooch rip-off), Irons rips into the role with relish, savouring every debauched moment and unabashedly leaning into Atticus' preening vanity. Unfortunately, both Irons and Atticus are trapped in a heart attack of a film, debilitating them and any narrative promise at every turn.

High on booze and cocaine, Atticus suffers a stroke during an awards ceremony where he has just received a lifetime achievement award. This throws several things in disarray, his ability to perform in his next project (where he's literally playing God) and, more pressingly, his attendance at his favourite child Annabelle's (Mamie Gummer) wedding, which is less than a week away. His other child, long-estranged son Adam (Jack Huston), is forced to drive him cross-country because Atticus' doctor has deemed him unable to fly. Predictably, it's a clash of personalities with the life-loving Atticus needling his son, a failed documentary filmmaker who is now teaching a course called "Women in Film: Cinema Through a Feminist Lens," at every turn.

Of course, long-buried resentments come to the fore. Though Atticus was cheating on Adam's mother, he continues to avoid being held accountable for his actions and views Adam as little more than a snitch. Adam, in the meantime, has been doing his best to avoid repeating his father's actions, swinging so far in the other direction that he doesn't even refer to Clementine (Megalyn Echikunwoke) as his girlfriend because he feels it infantilises her. Yet, viewers are also well aware that father and son will undoubtedly repair their fractured relationship but what an excruciating 97 minutes they must undergo for the film to limp along to its highly predictable and long-awaited conclusion.

An Actor Prepares

Directed by: Steve Clark

Written by: Steve Clark, Thomas Moffett

Starring: Jeremy Irons, Jack Huston, Mamie Gummer, Ben Schwartz, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Matthew Modine, Frankie Faison, Will Patton, Larry Pine