HOLLAR TREE

Opening this week: 

The Hollars—Even though the small-town middle American family of the title isn’t especially prone to raising their voices, the name somehow fits just the same. They’re an explosive bunch; you get the sense that hollering is what they’re always on the verge of.

John Krasinski plays John Hollar, the son who ran away from home. An aspiring but blocked graphic novelist, he’s been living in New York, working a day job he hates, and reluctant to marry his girlfriend Rebecca (Anna Kendrick) even though she’s in the homestretch of carrying his child. When John learns that his beloved Mom (Margo Martindale) has collapsed and is in the hospital, he hurries home.

Immediately he’s dropped back into the squabbles between his blubberingly emotional, short-fused father (Richard Jenkins) and his divorced, underachieving, angry older brother Ron (Sharlto Copley), whose ex (Ashley Dyke) and two daughters are now living with a maddeningly nice, patient pastor (Josh Groban). Ron, by contrast, is living back at home with the ‘rents, even though Dad has fired him from the family plumbing business, which John also learns is about to go belly-up. Interrupting all of this drama is Mom’s massive brain tumor, for which she’ll quickly need surgery.

If you’re not hearing anything particularly groundbreaking in this synopsis, you’re not wrong. The Hollars, written by Jim Strouse and directed by Krasinki, is fairly standard dysfunctional family comedy-drama, the sort of modest, “character-driven” piece that actors have a hard time resisting.

Fortunately, the actors who couldn’t resist this script include several of the best now in American movies, and Krasinski managed them briskly. There are scenes that seem heavy-handed and obvious, as when the brothers confer with their mother’s Asian surgeon (Randall Park) and the anxious Ron can’t stop himself from bringing up the man’s race. But most of the interactions between these frightened, pissed-off, loving people ring more or less true, and the actors get all that there is to get out of them, and maybe a bit more.

Vibrant as the whole ensemble is, Krasinski deserves highest marks for giving Margo Martindale a juicy opportunity in a feature film. Long valued as a supporting player, Martindale is showcased here, and has a couple of Oscar-clip-worthy scenes with real punch. But her quiet scenes with the lantern-jawed, sadly smiling Krasinski are even better—John and Mom are the soft-spoken, mild-mannered Hollars, and their conspiratorial, amused alliance is the heart of the movie.