Dean Craig’s latest film, The Estate revolves around two sisters, Macey (Toni Collette) and Savanna (Anna Faris), who own a failing restaurant that is in danger of closing if they don’t come up with the money to keep it afloat. When their mother tells them their infamously awful Aunt Hilda (Kathleen Turner) is on her death bed, Macey and Savanna hatch a plan to get in their aunt’s good graces and convince her to leave her massive estate (Like the title! Haha! Funny!) to them. Because Aunt Hilda is apparently a proverbial shrew, she has no children or spouse to leave everything to, so the two siblings see this as the perfect opportunity (and apparently their only opportunity) to save their business while simultaneously becoming filthy rich. The only problem is that Aunt Hilda’s other nieces and nephews also have the same idea, and what follows is 96 minutes of petty bickering over a dying woman’s wealth that tries to get passed off as comedy.
Sure, it’s possible that this gold-digging plot might be, in some universe, appealing to people. After all, who doesn’t like a good family rivalry movie, especially when it’s at the expense of the batty old crone of a family member who just also happens to be rich, amirite? The only problem is that to really go there with a plot like this, said batty old crone needs to actually be batty and unlikeable. In the case of The Estate, Turner’s Aunt Hilda comes off as more gruff than certifiably cruel which makes it hard to really get behind Macey and Savanna’s plan to rip her off. Yeah, she’s not the warmest of people, but she also doesn’t ever truly feel that bad. In fact, when Macey and Savanna attempt to get their terminally ill aunt laid (yes, really), the dinner date they set her up on with her high school crush actually ends up feeling more sadly sweet than sour. And while, yes, ultimately this does seem to be the movie’s eventual message — people might not be as bad as you think, and you might actually be worse than you believe! — it does a pretty terrible job getting its viewers to that realization.
Perhaps the problem is in the acting. Collette is, as usual, delightful in her role as Macey, the nervous older sister who has doubts about the plan from the beginning and is, ultimately, the most likeable of all the characters. But Faris is, to be blunt, downright annoying as Savanna, the younger sister who essentially just scream-talks for the entirety of the film and runs from room to room of her dying aunt’s mansion like she’s just snorted a bunch of Adderall off the ticket counter in the back of her restaurant. In her defense, Faris doesn’t really have much to work with in the script. Her character is basically designed to be the overzealous, ready-for-anything, trainwreck of a younger sibling. But her irritating personality reads far more often as annoying than comical which is a problem for a film that is hoping you’ll laugh a few times at everyone’s Bad Behavior. Other characters, like Rosemarie Dewitt’s Beatrice — another cousin vying for the inheritance — aren’t given nearly enough to work with. The goody-two-shoes-esque Beatrice has so much potential to be truly unhinged on her quest for the family fortune, but she ultimately fails to really go there with a script that holds her back in all the wrong ways more than it allows her to let loose. David Duchovny, who plays a slightly incestual cousin (which, that joke in and of itself is so tired), also feels more like he’s playing the role of “creepy family member” than ever really getting to define himself as an interesting and amusing part of the whole.
Ultimately though, the film’s biggest issue is that it tries to shock with its amoral attempts at humor, but the results end up creating few laughs. This is in large part due to the fact that the jokes sometimes feel recycled from other, better comedies, but they also teeter on the edge of inappropriate in a way that honestly does feel, well, inappropriate. It’s hard to discern what things are meant to be funny and what things are nothing more than Craig’s own blind spots as a director. Take the women of this film, for example. Many, if not all, of them have failed in their own personal relationships, and their domineering personalities have brought about their downfalls across the board (see: the Strong Women = undatable trope). Only Macey seems to be in a somewhat healthy relationship with a man who apparently cries a lot. And when the only person of color in your film (that takes place in New Orleans, for God sakes) is a Black character who cries a lot and is played for comic relief, that’s kind of not really a good look, either. This is 2022, Craig. Come on.
When it really comes down to it, The Estate is just kind of boring. It rarely offers up anything new or original, and its grand finale feels overly predictable and extremely undeserved. If this is supposed to be a movie about how sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own attempts to save ourselves that often we end up becoming the villain, it fails spectacularly. Then again, maybe it’s just a film about bad people doing bad things, but if that’s the case, it doesn’t get nearly bad enough.
Photo courtesy of Signature Entertainment
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