St. Vincent (2014), PG-13, ★★★

Bill Murray playing around with a kid.

When moving to a different neighborhood, you have to expect the unexpected. However, you have visited the house at least one time when your realtor has shown around the house and you have done some research regarding the house. The house would look spiffy, clean, and full of advantageous resources and commodities. But, customers look inside the house and care about whether or not it would be comfortable and spacious. But, what about the environment outside the house? That's what I mean about expecting the unexpected because you do not know who will be friendly or gruff next door or across the street. The movie has the conventional arc of the film but its charm and versatility is what sold me.

Vincent McKenna (Bill Murray) is an unfunny alcoholic who lives alone with his cat, Felix. He is in a sexual relationship with a pregnant Russian stripper named Daka (Naomi Watts). Vin tries to sell his home to the bank, but fails. He tries to close his account but is overdrawn. He takes out his frustration when he tries to cut a block of ice for a drink and accidentally smashes his hand and bangs his head on the cupboard, accidentally knocking him out.

On the next day, a couple of movers back their truck into the fence and tree wrecking them both while a branch falls onto Vincent's car. He wakes up to confront the movers and as his new neighbor, Maggie Bronstein (Melissa McCarthy), with his son, Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), gets out to defend them. In the end, Vincent is still upset as he is rude and saying that one way or another, they are going to pay for the damages.

When Maggie is unable to pick him up from school because of her job as a CAT scan technician, Vincent is going to babysit Oliver at a good rate and she reluctantly agrees. They both have personal problems as Vincent owes a man named Zucko (Terrence Howard) money based on their shady business relationship and Oliver gets in trouble or gets teased a lot at school. However, based on their conventional relationship as neighbors and friends, it somehow gets resolved with some interfering events in the way.

Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) sitting with his son (Jaeden Lieberher) and somebody else.

I liked this little gem of a film. The mood is tender, obnoxious, funny, and innocent, sometimes in a scene simultaneously, as we witness the bond between two friends of different ages who resolve their situations in other sides of their own spectrum as they try to get their acts together. There is also some drama in the middle of a custody battle for their son which seems to be a bit conventional, however, the payoff is sincere and acknowledgeable as it does end predictably and it is best for about everybody.

Bill Murray does what he does best. He gives comic performances even though, sometimes, in a scene, it is like he is not trying too hard and it turns magical like in his earlier works in Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Stripes, Scrooged, and Groundhog Day. McCarthy plays the straight woman with not much laugh-out-loud riots. It is great to see her committed to a different character as a struggling divorced mother doing everything she can that is best for her son. But, the key performance, for me, is Jaeden Lieberher as a kid with a lot of pep and some chemistry with Murray. He does not go beyond the limits of being a stock cute kid.

The film gets a little corny and too sentimental towards the end as two overlapping situations occur on the way to a climax. It becomes conventional as Murray acknowledged as "St. Vincent". The ending becomes also a little too conventional for my taste as a cheerful and redeeming end but with a few nice touches. Even though the movie is a little predictable, the film won me over with the performances, the humor and the tone of the story. It is great to see Bill Murray back in form again being funny.

***