Hateful and hilarious

>> Jason Bateman gets villainous
in the nasty comedy The Ex

by MALCOLM FRASER

When The Ex begins, Tom (Zach Braff of Scrubs and Garden State fame) is lying in bed with Sofia (Amanda Peet), engaging in cutesy banter about their about-to-be-born baby’s name. It looks and feels like an excruciatingly smug family comedy, complete with an inane kiddie-music melody chiming away in the background. Luckily, the film picks up from this inauspicious start and quickly develops some bite.

Braff, semiotically marked as a hipster slacker with his three-quarter t-shirt, gets fired from his job as a chef when he stands up to his obnoxious boss. As Peet is leaving her high-paying stint as a lawyer to have the child, the financial prognosis looks grim for the young family. Braff swallows his pride and moves the crew to Peet’s Ohio hometown, where he takes up a job at an ad agency with his father-in-law Bob (Charles Grodin, whose undeniable senior-citizen status is a bracing reality check for those who fondly recall his ’80s comedy heyday).

At the new job, he’s faced with not only being his father-in-law’s employee, and tolerating the company’s flaky corporate culture (which will be cringingly familiar to anyone who’s worked in media), but also has to contend with Chip (Jason Bateman), a wheelchair-bound, passive-aggressive alpha male who just happens to have a history with Peet. Tormenting and undermining his rival at every turn, Bateman quickly becomes the bane of Braff’s existence and the focal point of the movie.

One of the guiltier pleasures of Arrested Development was watching Bateman’s character shed his innocence and become as scheming a conniver as the rest of his nogoodnik family. Here, he lets his inner asshole out and flaunts it. He’s one of the most despicable characters in recent comedic memory; plus, with Farrelly Brothers-like political incorrectness, the filmmakers contrast his hateful personality with the fact of his disability to much uncomfortable effect.

Director Jesse Peretz (First Love, Last Rites) and first-time screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman strike a good balance between mean and good spirits, mainstream crowd-pleasing and light-hearted subversion. The Ex is a minor but well-executed and enjoyable comedy, with just enough likeable characters, painfully familiar situations and laugh-out-loud moments to qualify as a worthy spring date flick.

The Ex opens this Friday, May 11

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