The Estate – now on Hulu – is a rich-people-behaving-badly comedy rife with, perhaps not unexpectedly, sex, booze and murder. Director James Kapner posts up Happy Endings’ Eliza Coupe as one of the leads, and flies in rent-a-star Eric Roberts for some purportedly nasty fun. The movie is another among many indies in Hulu’s ever-growing library of under-the-radar films; let’s see if it’s worth seeking out.
THE ESTATE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Title card: THIS IS A TRUE FABLE. OK. Got it. Clear as mud. Lux (Coupe) and George (Chris Baker, who also wrote the screenplay) live together in a hideous nu-money mansion bathed in neon pink lights. Where exactly they live isn’t specified, but I’d wager it’s Florida. It HAS to be Florida. Could be L.A., but I’d argue that the movie wants us to think it’s in Florida. Anyhow, George is the adult son, Lux is the trophy wife/his stepmom and Marcello (Roberts) is the dad/husband who’s off somewhere being a megarich POS and letting their mansion crumble into disrepair. That’s actually an overstatement – some of the rooms have plastic sheeting masking-taped to walls, so the place just needs some renovating, which is a TRAGEDY if you’re worth nine figures.
Point being, Lux and George are spoiled rotten, but in their minds, they deserve more than just a vintage Porsche, closets full of clothes and not having jobs. I mean, the pool is dirty, it looks like only seven or eight of the bathrooms are fully functioning and they don’t even have a maid. My god, the suffering. Lux and George seem to be the type of people who’ve been bored and idle their whole lives, and therefore became awful human beings. He has empty-headed, featherweight dreams of being invited to an elegant black-and-white socialite party someday. She just wants to get totally railed, often, and laze around all day. They’re best pals with a weird dynamic since they’re technically mother and son; they party and whatnot together, like they’re inseparable, bonded in their superficial attractiveness and moral depravity.
Moral depravity? Beyond all the grotesque privilege? Yes, we’re getting to that. George is gay, so when Lux says, “Get dressed. We’re going dumpster-diving for dick,” it’s at least logical. They hit a dive bar and meet a tattooed side of beef named Joe (Greg Finley), a Boston Townie with a big scar down the side of his face. He goes back to Uglyham Palace and shtoinks Lux to her satisfaction, then hangs out for a bit. When Lux and George gripe about their unBEARable living situation and openly discuss killing Marcello for their fatass inheritance, Joe reveals that he’s a professional hitman. God or the universe or whatever has such a sense of humor, doesn’t it? Especially considering Joe also likes to have sex with men.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Maybe Heathers or The Last Supper, possibly other satires with protagonists who are terrible people that get increasingly murder-y – but absolutely Very Bad Things.
Performance Worth Watching: Spitting ribald and noxious one-liners, Coupe really seems to relish playing an irredeemable human being.
Memorable Dialogue: Joe: You want me to kill him for you?
Lux: Oh my god – that is so. Sweet!
Sex and Skin: A few sex scenes, bare butts, screams of ecstasy, shots of the pool boy blasting water from a long hose, etc.
Our Take: There are moments when The Estate nearly achieves satirical liftoff: When George wonders how they’ll avoid scrutiny by the cops, Lux reminds him, “We’re white, and we’re rich.” And when their deeds indeed get dark, it draws other detestable opportunists out of the woodwork. But the movie doesn’t follow through on these ideas. It’s not a pasquinale of corrupt, amoral Americanism; it rummages through deplorable situations in search of some comedy, and mostly comes up short. We get it – rich people are a-holes. Why? Because lives of luxury nurture amorality, I guess?
At times, one can sense Kapner and Baker reaching for something more than the film’s predictable parade of phallic sight gags, elbow-in-the-ribs soundtrack cues and backstabbing plot twists. Kapner shows occasional flashes of proficient visual storytelling, in a long-take fight sequence, and at the end, when the irritating music gives way to silence and the type of imagery and camera movement copped from auteurs like Paul Thomas Anderson or Nicolas Winding-Refn. But this last-minute condemnation of the characters’ ugly actions feels tacked on to a crass comedy that previously reveled in its bad behavior – including the high psychosexual squick factor of Joe hopping between George and Lux’s beds. That’s yet another element exemplary of the movie as a whole – it’s more of an inch-deep joke than anything that’s going to seriously challenge our sensibilities.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The Estate is a slick dark-comic thriller-ish endeavor, but it’s shallow, tonally uneven and only infrequently funny.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.
