Familiarity is said to breed contempt, but in the arts, it is just as likely to produce complacency. Steve Coogan and writer/director Michael Winterbottom are marking their seventh collaboration with their newest feature, “Greed,” yet their breezy comedic shorthand only gets them so far this time around. A jumbled, over-stuffed mess of a story, the film is tonally schizophrenic and narratively confused, leaning too often on Coogan’s irresistible, intrinsic, and ultimately misplaced charm in a vessel that just isn’t designed for it.
Ostensibly the story of fictional fashion magnate Sir Richard McCreadie (Coogan) and his impending 60th birthday party, “Greed” isn’t afraid to jump around when telling its story. As Richard stalks around his palatial Greek estate prepping for his soiree, his sheepish biographer, Nick (David Mitchell), collects pieces of a larger life story for his book. Flashbacks show David interviewing people such as Richard’s schoolmates, mother (Shirley Henderson), ex-wife (Isla Fisher), and business partners to get a better idea of the man behind the myth. These flashbacks lead to their own flashbacks, which show Richard rebelling in school, haggling with sweatshop bosses, and even responding to questions during a House of Commons hearing during his rise to the top of the fashion merchandising world.
This backstory comes in pieces and is stitched into the present-day narrative showing all the prep going into Richard’s birthday party, which is a Roman-themed love letter to excess, stocked with paid-celebrity attendees, a reality show tie-in, gladiator games, togas, and even a lion. The script isn’t content with just 40 some-odd years of one man’s life as pretext for a story about a singular bacchanal, however. No, there’s also a sub-plot about Syrian refugees on the beach next to Richard’s party, another about Richard’s daughter and her reality show foibles, yet another about party-coordinator Amanda (Dinita Gohil) and her connection to the sweatshops, and another still about Richard’s Oedipus-obsessed son, Finn (Asa Butterfield).
If that sounds like too much for a 110-minute movie to juggle, that’s because it is. Winterbottom gives Coogan numerous opportunities to sink his teeth into the ruthless aspects of Richard’s character, yet it hardly serves the story (such as it is) and its heavy-handed messaging about the state of global capitalism. The fashion and retail industry Richard represent are indeed exploitative and buttressed by seemingly inexhaustible resources and celebrity defenders whose loyalty is easily purchased. Yes, the Richards of the world are shallow, ruthless, murderously cheap, and without anything resembling remorse, yet that comes as the pay-off rather than the set-up, here.
Coogan and Winterbottom do put together some legitimately funny scenes, yet they too often come off as the crutch upon which “Greed” rests when it doesn’t know where to go next. A major plot point throughout the film is biographer Nick’s growing understanding of Richard’s ruthless and cruel business model, which exploits the workers and conquered companies at all levels, yet Coogan is so practiced at being funny and charismatic within Winterbottom’s system that it can sometimes be hard to know who to root for. One gets the sense watching “Greed” that Winterbottom has gotten so good at exploiting Coogan’s comedic talents that he just let the guy run wild and wrote a story around the schtick to fill in the necessary thematic gaps.
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Naturally, Coogan is superb in the role, and isn’t afraid to play up the nasty bits that paint Richard as a true scoundrel. Yet Coogan is operating on his own frequency, and those around him struggle to balance the tonal seesaw “Greed” lives upon. This is hardly their fault, though, for the movie bounces between the absurd (the reality show) and the serious (the refugees) with alarming frequency and doesn’t seem to know how to piece them together. Is Winterbottom trying to say that people like Richard and his family are blind to the horrors of the real-world even when it’s right in front of them? If so, why not confront them with the consequences of their sweatshops rather than Syrians, who have no real connection to Richard’s work?
These kinds of answers aren’t forthcoming when diving deeper into the text of “Greed” and its characters, earnest though Winterbottom may be in trying to draw something more profound out of it all. The film is an interesting look at the world of corporate raiding, tax dodging, and shady financing, yet it has little more to say on the subject except to condemn it (hardly a unique take). A crowded narrative and tonal inconsistencies certainly don’t help matters, nor do the obtrusive attempts at moralizing in a film that plays most of its scenes for laughs. Indeed, Coogan and Winterbottom have pulled this trick off enough that one can’t help but feel like the pair got a little greedy with the formula when making “Greed.” [D]