Noah Pritzker’s Ex-Husbands is about how things end: relationships, marriages, chapters in lives, and lives themselves. It’s also about things not ending—the way marriages and marital problems roll on and parents remain flawed, fallible people. And whichever side of this equation Ex-Husbands is musing on, it’s full of memorably mellow humor.
New York dentist Peter Pearce (Griffin Dunne) is nonplussed to learn that his father, Simon (Richard Benjamin), has decided to file for a divorce after some six decades of marriage. Delivered in a disarmingly matter-of-fact manner, their conversation sets the comedic tone for the rest of the film. Ex-Husbands is the sort of funny movie that has few actual jokes. It makes us laugh just by having characters spell out the absurdities they’ve encountered in the simplest terms, like a man in his 80s talking about how excited he is to get back in the dating game.
Reeling from this news and his own impending divorce, Peter flies out to Mexico to spend some time with his sons, Nick (James Norton) and Mickey (Miles Heizer). Mickey has recently come out as gay, and Heizer portrays him with the mousy, eager-to-please attitude of a kid who learned to make himself small and useful as a form of self-defense. Nick, on the other hand, is the golden boy—a handsome guy who looks intimidatingly cool even when he’s just sitting there. Of course, that perfect façade soon gives way to reveal his own issues and insecurities.
Peter’s presence wasn’t expected and isn’t entirely welcome, mostly because his sons are in Mexico for Nick’s bachelor party. But their unexpected reunion in a sun-soaked, seaside resort provides Ex-Husbands with room to stretch out and explore everything from the push and pull of marriage to the challenges of moving on from a break-up at its own breezy pace.
Ex-Husbands is full of little moments that speak clearly to the particularities of father-son bonds, even the more run-of-the-mill, uncomplicated ones. When Mickey arrives at his dad’s new bachelor pad to have dinner early on in the film, the simple business of hugging and handing over a housewarming gift occurs in a stilted, awkward manner. They’re men without women—the female characters in this film are few and fleeting—and they seem totally lost without mothers and partners there to smooth out their social relations.
A particularly nice touch to Peter’s characterization is the subtle way in which he changes when he’s not in dad mode. He’s a smart and savvy guy who always seems a little unsure of how to step into a fatherly role around two grown men—how to avoid treating them like kids without trying to be their buddy. But then there are moments when he’s completely outside of that role—like when he regales a pair of strangers with a story about the time he got punched out by a saxophonist—and seems totally comfortable in his own skin again.
Pritzker’s script is well-written, filled with lively conversations between the lead trio, the bachelor party guests, and the other holidaymakers they encounter. On occasion, you can feel Pritzker’s hand a little too heavily, namely for the way he occasionally turns the characters into sock puppets mouthing the writer’s ideas. But mostly the dialogue feels organic, and there’s real pleasure to be found in simply sitting back and watching a group of people discuss their problems in an emotionally intelligent way. The funny, sad, poignant thing that Ex-Husbands keeps drawing us back to is how little that intelligence seems to help any of them.
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