This Christian Bale film is one of his most underrated movies. Here’s why it’s worth watching
In a recent op-ed, The New York Times proclaimed Tubi as “the little streamer that could,” noting that the often-mocked service has now eclipsed more established competitors like Peacock, Max, and Apple TV+ in total number of viewers. As a regular Tubi user myself, this makes perfect sense to me. Where else can you watch the Paul Verhoeven camp classic Showgirls, the intense 1990s action film Point Break, and all episodes of the Canadian teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation in one place?
It’s the quality and quantity of its library that keeps cash-strapped viewers like me coming back, and in August, there’s one movie that made me grateful I downloaded the app in the first place. Laurel Canyon, Lisa Cholodenko’s sexy, knowing 2002 comedy, is about a recently engaged couple, Sam (Christian Bale) and Alex (Kate Beckinsale), who stay at Sam’s mother’s Laurel Canyon house. Problems ensue when Sam’s mother, Jane (Frances McDormand), a laidback music producer, insists on maintaining her free-spirited lifestyle, which includes her romance with a much younger musician, intermittent pot-smoking sessions, and skinny dips in the backyard pool.
Not a lot of people remember Laurel Canyon, and that’s a crime that should be corrected right away. Here are a handful of very good reasons why you should watch the movie for free on Tubi in August.
Christian Bale shines in one of his rare ‘normal dude’ roles
American Psycho. The Machinist. The Fighter. Vice. Each of these vastly different movies have one thing in common: Christian Bale looking and acting weird. The Welsh-born actor has made a career out of gaining weight, losing weight, shaving his head, and putting on mountains of prosthetics to transform into the character he is trying to embody. So it’s a bit of a shock, and welcome surprise, to see him here playing … a normal dude.
Sure, Sam is highly intelligent (he just graduated from med school), but he’s just like any straight male his age: he wants to be with his very attractive fiancée and is mortified by his mother’s actions. Normal can be boring, but Bale finds enough complexities to make Sam more interesting than he initially appears.
Laurel Canyon — "Sublimation"
In one of the last scenes of the movie, Sam is swimming in his mother’s pool when he receives a phone call that totally upends his stable life. In a sequence inspired by The Graduate, Sam submerges himself in the pool and looks up, seeking to get away from an unclear future that lies before him. It’s here where Sam comes into focus; he’s still a kid running away from his problems, and Bale captures that arrested adolescence subtly and perfectly.
It gave Frances McDormand one of her best roles ever
Fargo. Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. Nomadland. Each of these vastly different movies have two things in common: McDormand and the Academy Award. McDormand won her three Best Actress awards for these films, and while each one of them is worthy, my favorite role of hers is her work in Laurel Canyon.
Jane could’ve been a caricature: after all, it’s very easy to fall back on clichés when portraying a “free spirit” who is as loose with her tongue as she is with her wardrobe. Yet, McDormand never makes Jane a caricature. Instead, Jane is fun, frustrating, sexy, and professional — you buy that this woman has toughed it out in the male-dominated music business and earned enough money for a nice spread in Southern California.
Most importantly, McDormand sells the hurt that runs underneath every interaction she has with her son. Sam is a straight arrow and doesn’t hide his winces when he sees his mom canoodle with her lover. McDormand’s Jane senses her son’s embarrassment and is wounded by it, but that doesn’t stop her from being who she is. It’s a completely lived-in performance, full of easy sensuality and raw emotion, and only McDormand could have delivered it.
It’s a movie about rock music that, well, rocks
Laurel Canyon is first and foremost about Jane’s strained relationship with Sam, but almost as important is the role of rock music in Jane’s life. It’s the one things that she has excelled at, and she surrounds herself in it in various ways: by sleeping with the lead singer of the band whose record she’s producing; by making her home in Laurel Canyon itself, a famous destination for musicians since the late 1960s; and by playing songs, both past and present, that reflect her indefinable personality.
The movie itself contains a range of eclectic songs that really set the mood and, sometimes, comment on the three main characters. The opener, In a Funny Way by Mercury Rev, weaves a spell that telegraphs Sam and Alex’s arrival into a strange, seductive world. The Shame of Life by Butthole Surfers, with its lead bridge, “I like the girls, and the money, and the shame of life,” describes the innocent decadence that Jane has lived in for the past two decades and the life that Sam has tried to run away from since he was a child.
Laurel Canyon can be serious at times, but it’s never not faithful to the fun and relaxed ethos of its lead character. If Jane isn’t the person you’d want to raise your child, she’s certainly someone you’d want to hang around with for two hours. So why don’t you?
Laurel Canyon is streaming for free on Tubi.
