How do you take a losing situation and turn it into a winning one? Better yet, how do you take a generic screenplay and turn it into one that is clever, funny and, yes, winning?
“Win Win” is the simple story of a down on his luck father who gets stuck with a runaway teenager but learns to love him, which is not the most ambitious of ideas, but whereas another film would be cynical and mean spirited, “Win Win” cheerfully takes the punches life dolls out in failure after failure and wins us over naturally.
“Shit.” The first line of the film comes from Mike Flaherty’s (Paul Giamatti) young daughter. A window ornament has been broken beyond repair. There’s nothing she can do, and she knows it. For Mike, there’s a tree threatening to fall on his house, a rattling furnace in his office and a losing junior high wrestling team he coaches that is not destined for greatness. He too uses the four-letter word because these are small problems he can do little to change. This is not the end of the world, but it still feels demoralizing.
So he takes a gamble and serves as the guardian of an elderly man entering into dementia so that he can claim a $1500 caretaker’s royalty. That perk comes with the burden of caring for the teenager Kyle (Alex Shaffer), who has run away from his junkie mother and perched himself on his grandfather’s doorstep.
Kyle’s a quiet kid, but not brooding and negative as numerous screenplays have pegged such problem children. Turns out he’s a skilled wrestler and actually gets Mike’s team close to winning for once. In fact Mike is the one winning. Everything that should’ve made his life harder has been skillfully turned around into something that works.
It’s a good feeling, and Giamatti’s naturalistic sad sack is just the right guy to root for. He’s the authentic voice in a screenplay that is funny and smart, but never intentionally jokey for the sake of some cheap laughs.
At the end of the day, “Win Win” concludes with the sentiment that life never works the way it’s supposed to. A movie this straight forward is typically lacking in substance. This isn’t.
3 ½ stars