The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014) Life is Beautiful with Robin Williams (vol.3)
“We have to have sex, immediately! I don’t have a lot of time…”
Joyous music and the sunshine of a public park introduce us immediately to The Angriest Man in Brooklyn with the ANG and E of Angriest and R of Brooklyn in a red font against an otherwise all white capitalised title card. It’s “September 1989” and a smiling “Henry Altman” (Robin Williams) and wife “Bette Altman” (Melissa Leo) are playing in a local park with their two young boys and life clearly couldn’t be any more blissful for the Altman family as Henry blows huge bubbles high into the air to the delight of his children before playing football, enjoying a picnic, petting an array of passing dogs and with Bette filming the day on video camera she asks her husband the simple question: “What are you thinking?”. Through the widest of smiles, Henry replies equally simply: “That I’m happy”.
Fade to Black.
“25 years later” we find an angry, haggard, frustrated and red faced Henry stuck in a traffic jam and as several quick cuts of the congestion aptly demonstrate, he’s going nowhere fast. Returning to a tired and weary Henry wiping sleep and tiredness from his eyes, he still cuts a frustrated figure staring at yet another red traffic light as his narration begins:
“As Henry Altman waited in traffic on the way to his doctor’s appointment, he mentally added subwoofers in small cars to things he hated. On his short list was also dog crap, car alarms, indecipherable parking signs, double baby strollers, ass crack fashion, men’s cologne, bubble gum, bicycles, hamsters, garbage trucks, neighbours, metal hangers, TV remotes, greeting cards, flip-flops, fliers for cheap haircuts, fat people, pigeons, The Weather Channel, smell of urine, new mothers, credit card offers, blocked phone numbers, big umbrellas, F train, JFK, BQE, ATM Service fees, 99 Cent Stores, radio personalities, networking, Starbucks, the Knicks, the Knicks, the Knicks…and God”.
A green light finally releases Henry from his purgatorial road to hell only to be immediately t-boned by a yellow taxi cab and climbing angrily out of the passenger side of his car he immediately volleys a stream of abuse to a taxi driver convinced he was OK to continue driving through his yellow light. Red light. Yellow light. Green light. It matters not to the angriest man in Brooklyn as he continues to threaten to report the driver to his company, have his badge taken away and to “send you back to your own country”. Accused of being racist (as well as angry), Henry retorts “How can I be racist when I don’t know what country you’re from?” before the driver confirms he’s from Uzbekistan and after receiving yet more racially tinged abuse he speeds away from the accident, and from Henry’s continuing abuse, with a prescient “You dead”. How right could he be?
We cut to “Dr Sharon Gill” (Mila Kunis) sat on a public bus and lost in melancholic thought as her narration begins:
“As Sharon Gill stared at the woman and her pet, she was consumed with grief over her own cat, Harold. Three days ago, Harold had jumped out the window. Afterward, she learned that this was not uncommon with cats. The fact that Harold landed on his feet 10 floors below was of little consolation”
At this point, the bus carrying Sharon comes to a shuddering halt due to a puncture with a passenger nearby inadvertently showering her with his cup of coffee. Her narration continues:
“Sharon understood that Harold was a trigger. That she was emotionally exhausted. Still, caring more for a dead cat than her sick patients was clearly a case of clinical depersonalization. No-one had ever mentioned this reality when she was a bright, shiny medical student. When she believed she was going to save the world one patient at a time. No-one told her that care does not equal need. Care being finite, need being endless. What care equals is 15 minutes per patient. Sharon wondered, not for the first time if poor, dear Harold hadn’t made the right choice”
As the above narration has continued, Sharon has dashed from one awkward patient interaction to another before descending several sets of stairs into the basement of the hospital and releasing a guttural scream of anguish. Meanwhile, Henry, squashed between two large built fellow patients in the waiting room, has called his office only to have his brother “Aaron Altman” (Peter Dinklage) completely ignore his call and after finally being escorted to the doctor’s office, reluctantly changing into a yellow hospital gown. Sharon is next seen popping pills in the hospital basement as we return to Henry and the incessant ticking of a wall clock that has seen an hour pass without seeing a doctor before finally, their worlds collide amid a bubbling and eventually angry, very angry exchange.
Entering the doctor’s room, Henry immediately exclaims he’s been waiting in the hospital for over 2 hours now. Angry, very angry, annoyed, bitter and frustrated and…who are you and where is my regular doctor? As Sharon explains that she’s covering for Henry’s family doctor he acerbically replies that his doctor “just wanted to get a jump on the weekend” before questioning both her age and her validity as a practising doctor. Doing her best to placate the volcano of anger in front of her, Sharon’s smiles drop as she reads the results of Henry’s previous scans and can only solemnly advise him “the results show a brain aneurism”. Stunned, Henry is unable to take in the seriousness of the news and through rising anger he asks the doctor how big the aneurism is and its location. Reluctantly, Sharon finally admits that it’s very big and located on his brain stem but…he really needs to make an appointment with a qualified and specialist neurologist.
Suffice to say, Henry’s anger is rising to boiling point: “Poor little Princess” he begins, before “Excuse me for dying” and accusing the doctor opposite him of not caring for him or his welfare as a patient. Back and forth the doctor and patient trade verbal blows until Henry hits a home run of insults and implies that Sharon would only be interested in “sick cats” rather than him or any other patients. Now flustered, Henry continues, calling Sharon a “Lemon Princess” and now with a shouting match well and truly underway, he continues asking, repeatedly, how long he has left and “Give me a number”. Under pressure and well and truly out of her depth, Sharon spots a magazine on a table and taking the number from the magazine’s headline, shouts “90”.
“90 minutes?” asks an incredulous Henry.
“Well fuck you!” he continues.
“Well you asked!” Sharon counters.
“90 minutes. That’s 6.22pm. I’m gonna be alive. I’m gonna be having a beer. I’m gonna be smiling because I’m gonna get your pouty little ass canned!”
As Henry storms out of the doctor’s office, Sharon angrily mutters “Dead Prick!”.
Storming down the hospital corridor, his backside hanging out of the yellow hospital gown, Henry has two final words of his own:
“Doctor Cunt!”
“Henry Altman” (Robin Williams) As you may have noticed, Henry is a particularly angry man! With only 90 minutes left to live and a hastily arranged going away party only attended by one lifelong friend, even “Bix Field” (Richard Kind) manages to piss on his deathly parade by bringing up a 40 year grudge going back to their college days and don’t dare mention the fact he also wants to squeeze in some late life sex before he goes, lest he finds out his wife is having an affair (and her sexual needs met) by their elderly neighbour “Frank” (Bob Dishy). “I wish you were dead!” exclaims wife Bette Altman. “Well it’s your lucky fucking day!” Henry replies, before slamming the door on that part of his life in search of the remaining remnants of a life well lived if not recently wholly enjoyed. In search of a reconnection with any and everyone who’s crossed his path in his 60 years of life, he’s particularly desperate for a late reconnection with his son “Tommy Altman” (Hamish Linklater) and, well, when all seems lost, there’s always the final alternative of taking his remaining life in his own hands and throwing himself from the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River…
Notable as the final film released during Robin’s lifetime, I wasn’t a fan of this film a decade ago but my recent re-watch has seen a reappraisal for a film that really warms to its awkwardly funny and melancholic task (the scene between Robin and James Earl Jones midway through the film is a true gem too) and as the dual narrations continue and flashbacks paint our backstory before we’re propelled back to Henry dashing from one late life disaster to another, “in the end, all we have is family”, and if you’re not smiling through copious tears as Henry dances with his son one last time, you have a heart made of pure stone.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon
The poor Knicks- he hates them in triplicate!
And "Doctor Cunt" sounds like a name for a nemesis for my superhero characters- but, as much as I would like to hear them shout it, I'm sure the ladies who follow me would object....