Sofia Coppola’s latest feature has its faults, but ‘On the Rocks’ is a fun and enjoyable movie that fans of Coppola will love.
In her first film since 2017’s The Beguiled, Sofia Coppola turns her new film On the Rocks into a sweet but occasionally sappy love story of a different sort. In this film, the relationship is not between partners but about a father and daughter trying to rekindle a relationship that had soured long before. Reminiscent of her early film Somewhere in how it approaches fatherhood, Coppola looks at what causes a family to drift apart… and come back together.
Rashida Jones stars as Laura, a writer/wife/mother who has found her life stagnating. As she begins to question her own lack of success as a writer, and possibly as a wife as well. Laura begins to think that her husband Dean—played by an incredibly game Marlon Wayans in a rare dramatic turn—is having an affair with his coworker. Laura’s impending 40th birthday isn’t helping matters, nor is the arrival of her somewhat estranged father. 
In comes Bill Murray, star of Sofia Coppola’s magnum opus Lost in Translation and the perfect foil for Jones’s deadpan energy. Murray is turned up to 11 for the entire film as Felix, a complicated man who seems to know every person in New York City and beyond. Felix cheated on Laura’s mother when Laura was young, and it has left unspoken scars on both the dad and the girl. But as Laura grows suspicious of Dean, she turns to her father to learn his playbook.
This is where the fun of On the Rocks begins. Murray is a hellion, swinging with manic energy into every scene. In essence, he is playing a Bill Murray-type. But beyond that, he is playing the kind of father everyone thinks they want but no one actually enjoys. Care-free and fun-loving, Felix has never been interested in fatherhood. Instead, Laura and her sister grew up raised by a mother and grandmother. The only man in her life was absent most of the time, but now she needs him more than ever.
On the Rocks is cute and fun, but it isn’t without its flaws. While jokes in the film about writer-culture and about A24 (who actually produced On the Rocks) land with a sense of humor unique to Coppola, some of the pathos-heavy moments don’t work quite as well. A scene where Bill Murray and Rashida Jones are pulled over after Murray speeds through the streets of Manhattan in a red Corvette feels for a second like it will be a commentary on police brutality when they start to question Jones. Instead, the charms of Felix (and Murray) win over the cop and nothing bad happens.
On the Rocks is best when it is a dramedy about a woman trying to come to terms with her husband’s apparent affair with her complicated father as a sidekick. When it aims to be more about the emotional relationship between Laura and Felix, it seems as if only Rashida Jones is prepared to handle the heaviness.
Coppola has made great movies about marriage, daughterhood, fatherhood, and Bill Murray before. While On the Rocks never reaches gets to the depth of those movies, it does have some of the funniest jokes in her career. If we got more films like On the Rocks in a year, the movie system would be much better off.
On the Rocks is on Apple TV+ starting October 23rd.
