It’s BOATS time! Now on Hulu, Four Good Days is a Based On A True Story drama starring Mila Kunis as a heroin addict living on borrowed time, and Glenn Close as her long-suffering mother. The film is based on a Washington Post article about a Detroit-area woman, Amanda Wendler, and her decade-plus struggle to overcome opiate addiction; the piece was written by Eli Saslow, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Rodrigo Garcia, who notably helmed 2011’s Albert Nobbs, a piece of Oscar bait for Close. Four Good Days didn’t get much awards traction, but it might be enough of an acting showcase for the leads to make it worth a stream.
‘FOUR GOOD DAYS’: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Molly (Kunis) turns up at the door like she has many times before, desperate. Her mother, Deb (Close), won’t let her in. She doesn’t care that Molly has been sleeping beneath an overpass or that her teeth are rotting out of her skull or if — if — she really, truly wants to get clean this time. She changed the locks and installed a security system so Molly can’t steal from her anymore. All trust has eroded. “Come back when you’re clean,” Deb coldly says to her, shutting the door and leaving her to sleep on the sidewalk — where Deb checks on her that night after insomnia and worry and stress has kept her awake, and again after sunrise. And Molly is still there, shivering.
Molly wants to go to rehab and detox. Fine. Deb loads her in the car, taking care to keep her wallet out of Molly’s reach. Molly is 31, long unemployed and unemployable, with two kids and an ex-husband and a recent ex-boyfriend who was also an addict and helped her steal money — and guitars and wedding rings and, and, and — from Deb and her husband. Deb has settled into a nice life with a job as a massage therapist at a casino resort and a kind, supportive partner in Chris (Stephen Root), but that security system beeps every time they open the door. Beep. Beep. Beep. BEEP. It nags her. Is forcing Molly out of her life the right thing to do for either of them? Does helping Molly also mean enabling Molly? Questions that can’t be answered.
So they go to rehab. Molly’s been there 14 times now. She detoxes for a few days and then sits in a doctor’s office with Deb. The doctor says he could give her an opioid antagonist, a shot that greatly reduces the effects of opioids in the body — but she has to wait four more days to get it. And if there are drugs in her system, the shot will put her in the ER. So Deb brings her home, against her better judgement, but her heart aches so mightily for her daughter to get better. It’s prickly, tense, but the “good” in Four Good Days doesn’t mean they have to get along. There’s baggage everywhere, and they trip over it 100 times a day. They go to the dentist so Molly can get dentures. They go to the grocery store, where they run into Molly’s old coach from high school. Molly goes into the garage for a cigarette and the door beeps. Seconds later, Deb goes to check on her and the door beeps. Beep. Beep. BEEP.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Mostly Ben is Back, but also rehab/addiction dramas like 28 Days and Postcards From the Edge.
Performance Worth Watching: Kunis — fearlessly going full-on anti-glam — and Close are on the same level here, giving strong performances in the service of a so-so screenplay offering a few opportunities for them to go big or go home.
Memorable Dialogue: A representative sampling of the slightly overwritten script here:
Molly: Mom. Since when did you believe in god?
Deb: Since not believing didn’t work.
Sex and Skin: Deb ventures into a crackhouse and sees people openly having sex, but the lighting is very dim and the crackhouse is very gross.
Our Take: This movie’s got a serious case of the melodrammies. We’ll likely hang with Four More Days for about an hour, but the third act drops enough whoppers on us that we stop buying any of it. All these flawed people, flawing around through some overly staged moments: Molly acting as the precautionary tale, giving a heartfelt confessional tearful speech to a group of high-school students. A wannabe-harrowing sequence in which Deb tromps through a drug house and shouts down a very large, intimidating dealer. Some of the moments are in Saslow’s original journalism, some are manufactured for Hollywood, but as presented here, they feel overwritten and too often amplified for the back row.
The movie is at least a halfway-decent actor’s showcase; we’ve seen Close do work like this before, but Kunis shows range that maybe we didn’t expect from a That ‘’70s Show breakout star. She’s very good here. There’s a moment when Molly visits with her kids and in her eyes you see this life that she’s lost, and we wish there were more moments of unspoken truths like it in a movie that tends to shout and weep a lot. It touches on some mother-daughter drama and builds to a heart-to-heart before deviating into stuff that borders on hyperbole. There’s no real subtext or reflection on the opioid crisis; the film is more about its emotional content, although the final coda is poignant in its ambiguity, its resistance at giving us a truly halcyon conclusion. But ultimately, the movie just doesn’t go deep enough to warrant more than ye olde comparison to a TV Movie of the Week or a Just Say No commercial. It’s sincere, it’s well-intentioned, it’s watchable, it’s utterly competent, but don’t expect more than that.
Our Call: Four Good Days is very much a mixed bag. STREAM IT I guess, but keep your expectations modest.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
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