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Dysfunctional famiy: Blethyn is in top form in this coming-of-age comedy
Introducing the Dwights is a coming-of-age comedy in which the kids are only a little more immature than their selfabsorbed parents.
Veteran British actress Brenda Blethyn stars as Jean Dwight, a onetime rising star on the English comedy scene whose prospects faded as she married a country singer, moved to the suburbs of Sydney and had a couple of sons. Now she’s divorced, funny-bitter and working days in a cafeteria, with occasional bookings on the Australian equivalent of the Holiday Inn circuit.
Jean blooms in the spotlight, telling cynical jokes about love and relationships. Her bawdy patter is dated, but she almost defies the crowd not to laugh; she has the stage presence of a steamroller in sequins.
Offstage she’s a brassy diva who controls her boys with a heavy hand. She has appointed 20-year-old Tim (Khan Chittenden) her roadie-assistantchauffeur and assigns him to keep tabs on his teenage brother Mark (Richard Wilson), who is mildly brain damaged.
Both boys are cowed by her over-possessive streak and yearn for lives of their own, yet they’re seduced by the warmth and constant excitement of their loving, chaotic home.
Cupid intervenes when Tim’s deliveryman job puts him at the doorstep of the lissome Jill (Emma Booth). She’s taken with the cute boy but frustrated by his ingrained shyness.
As Tim tests his newfound independence, a tug-of-war erupts between the women in his life, with Jean’s resentment intensified by her nerves over a vital, imminent audition.
Ex-husband John (Frankie J. Holden) tries to make peace, offering Tim the priceless advice, “For most women, the most important thing is to be right. All the time. About everything.”
In an emotionally rich performance, Blethyn walks a fine line, making Jean a vortex of ego that the boys reasonably want to escape, yet not such a domineering banshee that she alienates viewers.
The supporting players are amiable and, while the family’s multiple dysfunctions verge on cartoonishness, the actors keep their characters relatively realistic.
There’s a nice relationship between Tim and Mark, who have a back-channel telephone relationship unknown to Mom; and Jill isn’t a teen vamp so much as a younger, less shrill version of Jean, a take-charge gal that Tim can understand.
The young lovebirds’ courtship, with her matter-offactly directing their activities in the bedroom while he shyly hangs back, is the sort of fresh, honest, rueful comedy that people appreciated in Knocked Up. It’s close at times to being overly sentimental, but Blethyn is in top form.
© Minneapolis Star Tribune
