This film is about three generations of men. The subjects are a young man in his mid 30's, his father who is in his 60's and the young man's grandfather who's in his 90's. Each of them are the titular character, to one degree or another. The film, written and directed by Noah Pritzker in his sophomore feature, is about how each of them deal with the dissolution of a marriage. Each one handles their respective break-ups in different ways. Basically, one is happy about his break-up. Another is fully depressed. The other is somewhere in the middle, if not just confused. Pritzker's narrative attempts to explore each of those three reactions. He may not be attempting to explore them, as he is simply attempting to depict them. Watching the three men react is well done in terms of the acting and the gentle and empathetic film-making, but it doesn't seem like enough to provide deeper understanding.
Griffin Dunne (This Is Us and Frasier) stars as Peter Pearce, a 60-something dentist in New York who is married and has two sons. One day, he's at the movies with his wife and his parents. It's then that his father, Simon, tells Peter that he's divorcing Peter's mother. Peter is shocked that Simon would do so, despite being in his 90's. Peter is also shocked that Simon is very optimistic, thinking that he can still find love again, despite being in his 90's. Peter doesn't agree. He doesn't think divorcing at such an older age is a good idea. Six years later, Peter's wife is also filing for divorce after 35 years. The obvious question is why? Why is she divorcing Peter after all this time? Unfortunately, Pritzker's film never answers that question. With Simon, he calls marriage "a grind," but we never get any clarity on what that means. Peter's wife, Maria, played by Rosanna Arquette, has even more opaque motivations.
James Norton (Bob Marley: One Love and Little Women) co-stars as Nick Pearce, the eldest son of Peter. Nick is 35 and works as a waiter. He's engaged to be married and his brother has planned a bachelor party in Mexico. Nick's friends are coming along. What nobody knows is that Nick's fiancée has broken up with him and is in the process of cancelling their upcoming wedding. She wants to announce the cancellation, but Nick isn't ready yet. He's going on the trip to Mexico without anyone knowing that the bachelor party is all for not. His brother doesn't even know and his father certainly doesn't know. Nick is trying to pretend he's fine, while being secretly depressed.
The obvious route would be for Nick to undergo some kind of self-reflection or analysis of what went wrong in his relationship or what might be wrong with him. Unfortunately, Pritzker's film never does that. The film does some flashbacks. We get one scene where we see Nick meet Thea, his fiancée or ex-fiancée. She gets one other scene where Thea briefly pops in, but that's all we get of her and her perspective of her relationship with Nick. Later, Nick says that because he works as a waiter at his age and because she got a job in Philadelphia and he didn't want to go with her contributed to the breakup. Yet, Pritzker doesn't delve any deeper into Nick and why he still has a waiter job or why he said no to Philadelphia or what his relationship with Thea was actually like.
Miles Heizer (13 Reasons Why and Parenthood) also co-stars as Mickey Pearce, the youngest son of Peter. Mickey is probably in his early 20's. He seems to have a more white collar job than his brother. He also recently came out as gay and is freshly navigating dating men. He ends up hooking up with one of Nick's friends and potential groomsmen who identifies as straight and is married to a woman. Given that Mickey's father and brother are simultaneously dealing with marital issues, one would assume his hooking up with a married man might elicit more introspection or dialogue about all this, but Pritzker's feature skims over it and doesn't take advantage of that opportunity.
The title of this film is a bit of misdirection. It isn't about understanding why these men are "ex-husbands." It's actually about fatherhood, and it's more about the relationship between Peter and his sons. At least, that's what the film is about on a superficial level. Peter seems to have a fairly good rapport with both his sons. His connection to Mickey appears to be the strongest. The weakest link is between Peter and Nick, but again Pritzker's feature barely gives any time for the two of them to talk about their lives and what they're experiencing in a scene together. Yes, Nick is depressed, but it would have been nice to see Norton play more than that one emotion.
Not Rated but for audiences 16+.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 39 mins.
Available on VOD.