Thanks for Sharing” is the story of a group of chronic masturbators, but there’s more than one kind of jerk here.
Mark Ruffalo, Tim Robbins and Josh Gad play New Yorkers who belong to a 12-step program for sex addicts in a would-be dramedy co-written and directed by Stuart Blumberg, who wrote “The Kids Are All Right.”
This comedy is cringe-inducingly lame and the dramatic turns are visible as far in advance as utility poles on the prairie. The characters don’t come across as tortured or tragic (as in the much more acute and disturbing 2011 film about a sex addict, “Shame”). They’re just unpleasant.
Ruffalo is an environmental consultant with a penchant for porn and prostitutes, Robbins is the father of a drug addict (Patrick Fugit from “Almost Famous”) who issues brutally folksy, Dan Rather-ish aphorisms and Gad is an ER doctor who rubs up against strange women in subways and gets fired for filming up the skirt of his own boss.
The Gad character is, in short, a criminal the movie wants you to think of as redeemably naughty, but while some actors might have sufficient charm to pull this off, Gad is a sweaty troll who makes Zach Galifianakis look like Cary Grant. And that’s before he vomits on his shirt.
When Alecia Moore (a k a pop star Pink) turns up in her film debut as a fellow sex addict who instantly but inexplicably becomes his best friend, the movie takes on the feel of science fiction. Moore isn’t terrible, but she isn’t interesting either, which in my experience is usually the reason people choose odd haircuts like her upswept white wedge in the first place.
After five years of “sobriety,” whatever that means — surely not total abstinence? — Adam (Ruffalo) hooks up with an anorexic breast cancer survivor played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who spends half the movie slinking around in lingerie and trying to coax him into bed, though one suspects the real purpose is to coax the audience into thinking she is still 28.
The two Oscar-approved cuties swap painful bits of banter that they try to sell by smiling hugely. It’s like they’re wearing signs around their necks saying, “Please laugh.” Paltrow’s Phoebe says, “Yes, my tits are fake. That’s what happens when your real ones try to kill you.” Adam: “Is that what they mean by booby prize?” It’s hard to imagine anyone even reading the script past this point, much less opening the checkbook and going into production.
Meanwhile, the wise old veteran of the 12-step group, Mike (Robbins), is horrible to his son, who has just returned to town to accurately report he’s been drug-free for eight months and get into dreary little arguments with his disbelieving dad. Like I said: These characters came straight off the shelves of the jerk store.
In the end (after a strangely out-of-place scene in which a minor character is nearly killed by her own masochism), the movie suggests all these character flaws can be solved by a nice hug. That’s fitting, at least: The closing is as banal as the film’s trite title.