OK, maybe I just shouldn’t keep expecting writer-director Lynn Shelton to make the first mumblecore movie that I will like. Touchy Feely begins with a promising premise – a massage therapist (Rosemarie DeWitt) suddenly develops an aversion to touching the human body, which understandably threatens both her career and her relationship with her boyfriend. Unfortunately, Shelton takes both the premise and the excellent cast and crashes them into a crater of boredom.
Shelton made last year’s Your Sister’s Sister (also with DeWitt), which was really good for about 58 minutes, until it petered out in a senseless musical interlude and a montage of rainy bike riding. In Touchy Feely, the massage therapist addresses her affliction by moping and yakking and encountering Ron Livingston and moping and yakking some more. There’s a fun thread about her quirky uncle’s dental practice, but that’s entirely disconnected from the protagonist’s story.
DeWitt was exceptional in Your Sister’s Sister and uniformly excellent in Rachel Getting Married, Promised Land and Margaret – and Touchy Feely is not DeWitt’s fault. The fine actors Ellen Page, Scoot McNairy (Argo), Alison Janney and Josh Pais are similarly wasted.
Now I tend to like character-driven, talky movies. But I don’t like to watch self-involved twits obsess over their own avoidable, First World problems. That pretty much describes the mumblecore genre, especially when the male characters have bedhead. (This movie could have been even worse – the Gigli, Ishtar or Moment by Moment of mumblecore – had Greta Gerwig played Alison Janney’s role.)
There’s one really funny scene in Touchy Feely – where Alison Janney introduces the painfully awkward Josh Pais to Reiki. Other than that, just watch the trailer – it’s much better than the movie and it will cost you less than three minutes of your remaining lifetime.
Touchy Feely is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and XBOX Video.