The only likable character in Better Living Through Chemistry shows up in two scenes, late in the movie. His name is Jack, and his role in the film doesn’t really matter. Suffice it to say that he coasts on the warmth, depth and intelligence of the actor playing him, Ray Liotta, and when he leaves the screen, it’s all the more apparent that the rest of these 92 minutes have been a hopeless vacuum of incredulity — a pitiful simulacrum of reality that never approaches actual human behavior, that feeds off cardboard clichés and shallow vulgarity.
Sam Rockwell gives a listless lead performance in a role he must know is beneath is talents. He plays Douglas Varney, a case study in the modern emasculated schlub—henpecked by his bitchy wife Kara (Michelle Monaghan, in yet another thankless role) and disparaged by his miserable father-in-law Walter (Ken Howard), from whose small-time pharmacy he inherits. Since this is not a movie that lets audiences think for themselves, the voice-over narration, courtesy of none other than Jane Fonda, informs us that Douglas is “the kind of man who provided solutions for everyone but himself.” Profound, right?
In other words, typical, middle-aged movie malaise has set in like rigor mortis, and it’s prime time for Douglas to feel rejuvenated again. Enter Elizabeth Roberts (Olivia Wilde, overplaying with a sort of affected sexiness), a customer and bored trophy wife, for whom a late-night pill delivery leads to a torrid affair. For Douglas, this dominoes into an addiction to prescription uppers that offers a new lease on life and the sort of virility he’s never experienced. It isn’t long until the unlikely lovebirds are “joking” about offing Elizabeth’s mysteriously unseen husband and running off to paradise together, as his criminal activity increasingly spirals out of control.
The tone conjured by most of this plot description is neo-noir — the lazy kind, in which everything is telegraphed and nothing is nuanced. But the screenplay, by first-time directors Geoff Moore and David Posamentier, is pure urinal comedy (toilet humor seems like too dignified a phrase). After a school principal tells the Varneys that their son has smeared his own feces on the property of rival students, Monaghan is degraded into uttering the phrase, “He’s a Unash—-r?!” For these two waggish writers, the chance to hear Fonda, in her superfluous voice-over, employ the phrase “balls deep” during a sex scene, is the soul of wit. And just wait until Fonda’s in-person cameo, in which she praises the pharmacy’s abundance of feminine hygiene products. Stay classy, movie.
Speaking of lovemaking, the representation of sex in movies has seen powerful advances toward realism in recent decades. But Better Living Through Chemistry turns back the sexual clock toward cowardly caricature, all for the prospect of a few cheap laughs, which are the only kind the film can afford.
Ultimately, though, the movie becomes not only ludicrous but contemptible. (Spoilers may be contained herein). A machine-of-God contrivance involving a pharmacy delivery boy allows Douglas to get off scot-free for everything: stealing his business’ pills, cooking the books, illegally compounding medicines, committing adultery, vandalism (of his own property, during a ridiculous late-night bonding session with his son) and attempted murder, and, finally, cheating on a cycling competition with performance-enhancing drugs.
The trusty Etch-a-Sketch metaphor from the 2012 presidential campaign is helpful here: Douglas’ slate of reckless and degenerate behavior is wiped entirely clean, and he can move on to a hopefully more fulfilling life. The message? Drugs are awesome!
BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY. Directors: Geoff Moore and David Posamentier; Cast: Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, Michelle Monaghan, Ken Howard, Norbert Leo Butz, Ben Schwartz, Peter Jacobson, Ray Liotta, Jane Fonda; Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn; Rating: R; Opens: Friday at Movies of Lake Worth, Movies of Delray, Living Room Theaters at FAU, and the Classic Gateway Theater in Fort Lauderdale.