Maya Forbes's directorial debut is playing to a packed house of quietly attentive punters and one guy who wants to share what he thinks with the rest of us. "THAT'S HILARIOUS!", he yells, as Mark Ruffalo playing Cameron - a bipolar father in the grip of euphoria - litters his flat with unfinished DIY projects. "THAT'S HILARIOUS!", again, when an argument between dad on the downswing and his two daughters descends into a swearing match. And "That's ... hilarious?", when Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana (playing Forbes's mum) realise his illness has made their relationship untenable and stand weeping in each other's arms.
You can forgive the foghorn's confusion: Forbes's autobiographical drama is a tonal slop bucket. Dip in your pail and up comes a primary-coloured comedy, an epic tale of familial dysfunction, or a righteous race drama. It's all roughly spun together with a dollop of sunshine and a ten-pound sack of sugar.
In the late seventies Forbes's family was destitute. Her dad was recovering from a nervous breakdown. Her mum - desperate to find the money to send Forbes and her sister to a good school - had decided to move away from their Boston home to study business in New York. With mum away the girls were raised by their father through the ups and downs of his illness. Infinitely Polar Bear (the name their dad gave his condition) details how they managed to maintain a stable, broadly happy home against the odds.
It's a remarkable story that would have made a fantastic documentary, but as a drama it's unbalanced, trying too hard to be lovable. Ruffalo has the tricky task of making a protagonist a likeable nightmare. We're shown a little of his depression and a lot of the mania, which is played for laughs. Ruffalo plays the goof, swinging around the set on a variety of wacky errands. Rarely is Cameron's manic condition acknowledged as anything other than playful. Meanwhile, his depression, when it's briefly shown, has him on the couch with a beer or five to hand. There's no fault in emphasising the sometimes comical nature of mental illness, but the film's drive to be constantly up, up, up does the story a disservice.
It's a shame, because when Infinitely Polar Bear flips back around you feel Forbes has something interesting to say. Cameron's eccentricities blossomed in the 1960s, when it's suggested his condition could be passed off as a product of the times. It's only when bohemia died that his illness became a problem. Then there's Saldana's character, who wants to find work to support her children, but can't get a job in Boston because of them. She's an anomaly for 1978: a black woman leaving her husband and kids at home in an attempt to become the bread-winner.
Infinitely Polar Bear is heartfelt and honest, but it's too cute by half. The better part of the film's energy is channeled into making Ruffalo funny, but his charm wanes quickly, his mania becomes a real - as well as a fictional - drag. The girls learn to live with their dad, even as he launches into another bout of photogenic craziness. He wobbles and skitters all over the picture - drowning out the story's darker elements with a take on manic-depression that's fogged by nostalgia. That's not hilarious. It's mildly annoying.
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