The mainstream contemporary adult drama has become a lost art in this era of genre blockbuster and superhero films. The gimmick-free adult drama, the types of movies that Julia Roberts would populate, no longer seems to be made for a wide audience.
A newcomer, “The Judge,” tries to fill that void. While this R-rated movie features a troupe of adults whose struggles with life come from an unceremonious relationship with parental figures, the film is riddled with clichés. It feels like the filmmakers were pining for those creations of a bygone era.
“The Judge” has a simple story, as most of these stories do. A cold-hearted big city lawyer (Robert Downey Jr.), who gets the baddest of bad acquitted, goes back to his small town roots and confronts his father (Robert Duvall), a judge, who is the reason why he has become the man he is today. Downey needs to help his father get through his own criminal trial, a recipe that makes for the most standard of courtroom dramas.
Director David Dobkin isn’t subtle with his themes. He flat out shows you from the opening frame of the film. All the surrounding characters, played by a great but underused supporting cast, serve as conduits to keep the momentum of the father-and-son dynamic moving. Vincent D’Onofrio plays Downey’s older brother, a should-have-been baseball star stuck in the small town because of an accident caused by his brother. Jeremy Strong is the youngest brother, a simpleton who spouts out words that are either comedic or wise beyond his brain capacity. Then there is the underrated Vera Farmiga, one of Downey’s old flames, used merely as a compassionate ear and given a subplot that goes nowhere.
Nothing about this film is surprising. It hits all the expected beats. This is the type of film in which a big emotional argument occurs in a court room during cross examination that causes the two protagonists to burst into tears. Even the actor sparring contest between Duvall and Downey doesn’t lift the movie out of its thorough averageness, although Duvall does have some wonderfully subtle moments undermined by laughable overacting in a later scene.
“The Judge” is overlong, hitting the same thematic points multiple times, causing it to lose any resonance it could have had. In the end, it’s troubling when the central conflict of the film can be boiled down to, “When I wanted a hug daddy, you were not there.”
Yet, the sincerity and clichés from tired movies feel fresh in today’s movie climate. Straightforward dramas like this are rare. That does not mean of course that this is a good film, but it’s a welcome choice in between the young adult adaptations or the most recent genre thriller. “The Judge” is a film of a bygone era that should not be gone. The producers of Hollywood need to make more of this kind of film, maybe just a little better.