The story of an inappropriately foul mouthed man with bad habits taking a mentoring role over small children is one we've seen in various movies over the years, such as Bad News Bears, Bad Santa, and Bad Words, just to name a few. St. Vincent is such a film, although maybe it should have been named Bad Vincent, to keep the titling style going. While it flirts with some darker material, by the end it has become overtly sentimental. The real draw of the film is its star Bill Murray.
Murray plays the title Vincent who seems as far from being a saint as its humanly possible to be. He lives on his own, with his cat, in his rundown house in Brooklyn. He spends his days in debt at the race track, drinking in bars, and sleeping with a pregnant Russian prostitute played by Naomi Watts. His life is interrupted when he gets new neighbors in the form of newly single mother Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) and her son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher). When Oliver gets locked out of his house one afternoon, he ends up in Vincent's house and Vincent sees an opportunity to make some money by babysitting for the long hour working Maggie. That Maggie would initially allow Oliver to be looked after by Vincent is the plot's weakest moment as well as Maggie's weakest parenting moment. Inevitably, Vincent and Oliver bond. Oliver is clearly in need of a father figure and Maggie is self-obsessed over the loss of her marriage. This all builds up to an emotional moment in a school auditorium where the schmaltz level gets pretty high.
The movie works best when it plays up the comedy. Murray plays the caustic old drunk well. It's easy to believe that this is where one of those slacker characters he played in the 1980s would end up. Because he's Murray, he brings that baggage with him and even when he's at his most ill-behaved it's hard to dislike him. The consequences of his most despicable act is glossed over without resolution. Naomi Watts also gets laughs as the stripper/prostitute complete with thick Boris and Natasha Russian accent. McCarthy (thankfully) plays it very restrained. Her's is mostly the straight and thankless part as the mother who behaves as if she's doing her best, but the script gets in several subtle digs at her parenting methods and often it is Oliver who must comfort his mother. Prolific Irish actor Chris O'Dowd has a small but funny part as a priest at Oliver's school.
Of course this isn't the first time Murray has played a father figure to a young boy. 1978's Meatballs saw him in a similar situation, although in that case his behavior was a little more appropriate. In both films the technique is the same simple premise of paying attention to the child. Oliver gets from Vincent, as inappropriate as it often is, the attention and mentoring that he so clearly craves.
Although the movie flirts with some dark humor, as it goes along the sentimentality starts to take over. We learn about Vincent's past and he becomes a bit more sympathetic. Oliver is tasked with writing a paper about someone he knows who could be a saint. You can guess from the title who he writes about. It's this moment that really pushes the schmaltz button. It's only the cast that keeps it from going too far over the top.
St. Vincent isn't a perfect film, but it is a showcase for Bill Murray who raises the material higher than it would go in the hands of someone else, helped out by the sincere performance of young Lieberher as Oliver.
