'Goodrich' Reviews: "It's a refreshing, down-to-earth film for Keaton"

         On October 18, 2024, Ketchup Entertainment released 'Goodrich', which has earned a mixed reception from critics, currently holding at 68% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the film, "Andy Goodrich's (Michael Keaton) life is upended when his wife and mother of their nine-year-old twins enters a 90-day rehab program, leaving him on his own with their young kids. Thrust into the world of modern parenthood, Goodrich leans on his daughter from his first marriage, Grace (Mila Kunis), as he ultimately evolves into the father Grace never had." But what did the critics say?

       Roger Moore of Movie Nation says, "There’s no heavy lifting in “Goodrich,” the Michael Keaton/Mila Kunis dramedy about a workaholic second-time-around dad forced to reconnect with his kids, including the one old enough to be pregnant. The jokes about trying, after 60, to learn to be a dad, are easy to reach to the point of cute and mostly low-hanging fruit. The formula in play is another “I did my best” parent facing a sometimes comic, sometimes sad reckoning. At its most somber, it reaches for “Kramer vs. Kramer.” In lighter moments, one can wonder if all involved could have just turned this into a sequel to one of Keaton’s earliest hits, “Mister Mom.” The edgiest thing about it is its rating, “R,” for profanity. It would have reached a wider audience as a PG-13. But this it’s well-acted and it plays. More or less. Writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer was an actress before getting that first writing-directing (Reese Witherspoon’s “Home Again”), but is still most famously the daughter of writer-director couple Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer, who remade “The Parent Trap” and “Father of the Bride” before divorcing. She doesn’t embarrass herself and give Hollywood “nepo babies” a bad name here any more than she makes her name with this slight, derivative star vehicle."

        Shawn Van Horn of Collider notes, "Written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer, and co-starring Mila Kunis, Goodrich doesn't deal with superheroes or the supernatural. It's a refreshing, down-to-earth film for Keaton, with him playing an aging man who is going through a coming-of-age story in the last act of his life. It's a simple, cozy dramedy, one you've watched before with beats you can see coming a mile away, and while it's not going to go down as one of Keaton's best, him giving his best takes it from being another paint-by-numbers film to something sweet and worth seeing if you want to see a feel-good story to counter the likes of Joker: Folie à Deux and Terrifer 3 at the cinemas."

       Alexander Harrison of Screen Rant writes, "Keaton's performance is the heart of this success. He somehow conveys his character's self-examination as a layer underneath each scene, to the extent that in each interaction outside a work setting, Andy appears to be discovering how to behave. It's like he was dropped into this movie right when we were, snapped out of whatever illusion kept him running for so long and having to learn what's really been going on with the people around him for the first time."

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash