I felt like I’d seen it before — the neurotic adult children whose non-specific damage is played for laughs; the deprecation of certain arts/academia “types”; the warm, helpful immigrant/minority who opens the eyes of the protagonist; the precocious “wit” of the pet’s name. Taken together, it looks like indie-by-numbers, and while I don’t dislike indie-by-numbers on the merits, The Savages is merely standard.

The same goes for the performances; I watched the movie primarily because it’s Oscar-nominated for Original Screenplay and Best Actress, and the acting has the same qualities as the writing — competent and professional, likable enough, mildly interesting, no more. Laura Linney has played this part before, and she’s good, but she doesn’t do it memorably enough here that you would forget past iterations of it.

It has its moments, but it doesn’t follow through on certain things, or plays them for laughs instead of exploring them further. Wendy’s writing-grant subplot is one example — it’s like the script doesn’t want to have an opinion about how she behaves, for fear of stumbling into cliché (which the cinematography and shot set-ups fail to avoid, several times) or uncomfortable sincerity, so it hides behind a sibling argument instead, and while the dialogue there is reasonably witty and real, it falls flat because the writing isn’t taking itself seriously. Even the title has that way about it: a serviceable pun on the family name which the writing stops short of rendering a judgment on. It’s just kind of safe and dependable, and we’ve seen better work from these actors, and on this subject.

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