APPLE TV+ | On the Rocks movie review

APPLE TV+ | On the Rocks is very much what you expect from Lost in Translation writer-director Sophia Coppola—it’s elegant, charmingly light and hard to pin down, like an Hermès scarf caught in an uncertain breeze. But something tougher-minded is going on here. Laura (Rashida Jones), a 39-year-old Manhattan writer, suspects that her husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans), is having an affair. Her father, Felix (Bill Murray), a successful art dealer with what seems to be an equally successful career as a Don Juan, steps in to help. He hires a private detective to check on Dean.

He also rents a bright-red convertible, stocked with caviar, installs Laura in the passenger seat, and sets off to follow Dean around the city. This is a comedy, of course, but it’s also peculiar. Why does the passive Laura allow her father to carry on like Auntie Mamie? (“Can you just act a little less excited about this?” she asks.) Why does Felix, proud lover of the opposite sex, talk about women as if he doesn’t understand them at all? “Women are like flowers,” he says. “They’re all beautiful, at any age—even dry flowers. I don’t know why women get plastic surgery.” Laura: “Because of men like you.” Murray is very funny—grandly, confidently ridiculous as he blithely canoes himself and Jones over the shoals of a marital crisis. And yet his performance only heightens the sense of Laura’s sharp predicament: Maybe she’ll need to ditch husband and father.