Ben Affleck Delivers a Decidedly Lesser ‘Animals’ for Netflix

The other day a Hollywood producer of my acquaintance passed on the following joke about actor-director Ben Affleck following the underwhelming reception to his new Netflix movie “Animals.” What does Ben Affleck do when he wants to maintain a lower profile? He directs a movie.That quip isn’t entirely fair. Mr. Affleck won an Oscar for “Argo” in 2013 and his previous directorial effort “Air” was a smash hit, albeit remaining under the radar. But he deserves scorn for “Animals,” which he directed, co-wrote and stars in. Mr. Affleck is himself a curious Hollywood animal; a star whose sulky demeanour always make him seem like he’s desperate to fall out of the sky. He clearly loves film and hates being a film star. In “Animals,” he plays Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate running as an independent, presumably so he doesn’t have to spend the film talking about actual policy. Kimball is having a bad day. His wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) decides she’ll tell him after the election that he’s leaving the family home to abscond with her lover; more immediately his son gets kidnapped from a Halloween event, with the abductors demanding a $7 million ransom. However it transpires the kidnappers took the wrong kid, instead snatching the son of his son’s nanny and her illegal Mexican boyfriend Ramon. Kimball enlists a kidnap fixer Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson) who just happens to be on hand to advise him on how to get the kid back. For a film with such high stakes, “Animals” is bizarrely lo-fi. Mr. Affleck’s Kimball is a politico who makes recent real-life LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt resemble Harry Truman; less Andrew Cuomo, more Affleck Comatose. Kerry Washington as his wife herself look as she’s in a hostage situation. “Animals” has an interesting backstory. Originally, it was to have starred Mr. Affleck’s buddy Matt Damon alongside the director’s ex-wife Jennifer Garner — partly, Mr. Affleck confessed, so he and Ms. Garner could more easily see their own children.Unkind observers would suggest that one of Mr. Affleck and Ms. Garner’s children could have directed this film better than their father has. Mr. Affleck certainly knows how to direct a film, but this slick, glib effort is as empty as a campaign promise.Only Ms. Anderson as the white-suited ransom specialist has only fun in this film. She speaks more like a politician, with references to leverage and reassurance of future outcomes, than the protagonist in “Animals.” It’s the type of role that Helen Mirren specialized in until recently — she also co-starred in 2009’s ‘State of Play,’ in which Mr. Affleck first unconvincingly played a politician.This time, with “Animals,” I think Mr. Affleck is trying to say that politicians have never been more nakedly performative or cynical. But his amoral main character’s victory, delivered in a convoluted yet oddly truncated climax, leaves the audience joining the citizens of Los Angeles on the losing side.“Animals” reinforces the sense that Netflix’s content philosophy — an indulgent approach in which filmmakers seemingly get their movies released without executive input during post-production or meaningful responses to test screenings — is inferior to the old-style Hollywood studio system. “Animals” needed someone at Netflix to say, “Look here, Ben. Before we can release this, we need a clearer sense of the kidnapper’s motive at the end. Oh, and while you’re at it, can you do something about the beginning and the middle as well?”For a drama about rich people caught up in a hostage crisis, stick to Kurosawa’s “High and Low” — recently given a commendable, underrated Hollywood remake by Spike Lee — or even Ron Howard’s 1996 picture “Ransom.”That said, I would watch a documentary about “Animals” in which Mr. Affleck is asked whether his film’s obsession with Latino outreach — evident in the Kimballs’ nanny and interminable discussions about election polling results — has anything to do with his second wife, Jennifer Lopez, from whom he recently split. For now, he has delivered a dud which does have a shot at joining the Mount Rushmore of cinematic political misfires.

Ben Affleck Delivers a Decidedly Lesser ‘Animals’ for Netflix

Ben Affleck Delivers a Decidedly Lesser ‘Animals’ for Netflix

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