One More Time (2015)

One More Time (Robert Edwards, 2015)
Walken plays: Paul Lombard - crooner, philanderer, Flaming Lips opener

Synopsis: Spoiler alert: being the child of a famous entertainer is hard. Yes, really! But just in case that hadn't already sunk in, writer/director Robert Edwards is here to trot out a stale parable of broken family, mid(late)-life crisis comebacks, and the rippling toxicity of celebrity, made more pleasant thanks to its capable cast. Here, Jude (Amber Heard), who is just as sick of Beatles jokes as she is being in the shadow of her washed up crooner father (Walken), is forced to temporarily bunk in his 'slum of the Hamptons' as she sorts out her train wreck of a life. Meanwhile, Walken's Paul pens a new tune, "When I Live My Life Over Again," and uses it as a springboard for his latest comeback du-jour, which sparks its own waves of drama.

One More Time is the kind of old school indie drama that employs adjectives like 'flawed,' 'real,' and 'complex' to defend characters when they're really all just synonyms for dislikeable. It brings to mind the fact that it's kind of fresh to see Walken play someone genuinely dickish rather than his usual loveable/evil oddballs, and he's careful not to downplay Paul's foul, selfish life decisions, and shitty parenthood. But, in counterbalancing them with his indomitable charisma and hard-etched pathos, he here offers a deceptively mature and insightful character study into why we continue to tolerate such sleazebags, let alone elevating them to the status of matinée idols. It goes without saying that his Sinatra-style singing is spectacular, and seeing a bunch of kitschy album covers of Paul's past works and their schizophrenic genre-shifting through the years is good for a lark as well, so the film is well worth it in that respect if nothing else.

"Wait...You're not Kristen Stewart. So why have you been responding to 'Bella' this whole time?!"

Wacky Walken dialogue: Considering how uninspired the script is as a whole, the quota of Wacky Walken-isms is off the charts. Here are some of his best:

• "Starshadow's a wonderful name! What if you'd been born during my jazz period? You would've ended up named 'Mingus.'"
• "If I'd been born in Hindustan, I'd reincarnate like the Hindus can" (this opening lyric to his "When I Live My Life Over Again" song is played entirely straight, which only makes it all the more delightfully ludicrous)
• "Keep me company! I'll be dead soon!"
• At one point, getting stoned on the couch watching old reruns of his televised concerns, Paul gets giggly, and keeps repeating the name 'Kim Jong-Il' as if it's the funniest thing in the world, which is worth its weight in gold.
• "Corrine, I don't have time for two batshit daughters right now; you're supposed to be the stable one."
• And finally: "Stupid clay pigeons." (Paul is grumpy that the inanimate objects during skeet shooting are so inconveniently hard to hit)

"Hunting deer was so much easier than hunting these damn inanimate objects"

DOES HE DANCE: Yup! It's just a lil' Sinatra-esq stage shuffle during his song numbers, but it counts.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 5/10 cowbells. Walken is, as always, fantastic, and he's commendably committed to imbuing Paul with oodles of nuance and sympathetic pathos amidst his unabashed assholedom. And hey - any chance to get him singing and dancing is always infallibly worth it. It's a shame the script can't quite keep up with him, or, with some tidying (and a better scene partner than the mumbly Heard), this could easily have built into a solid Oscar bid. Instead, it's a pleasantly generic bucket of interpersonal drama with some choice moments glittering through, but still essentially one for the fans.