Jeremy Swift plays Storm Grandquist, a narcissistic writer, escorted by Natalie Gold, played Elizabeth Ford, to the Big Literary Award celebration in Telluride. (Courtesy of By And Large Medialabs)
Screen Time gives “Welcome to the Fishbowl” a Thumbs Up for delivering a funny, madcap road-trip experience.
Screen Time with Melodie Miller is a review column that looks beyond the trailer and connects audiences to movie perspectives.
In director Sheryl Glubok’s “Welcome to the Fishbowl,” a Denver-based stalled novelist and mother agrees to drive a self-absorbed literary legend to an award ceremony in Telluride in exchange for her former boss reading her novel. Glubok invites audiences to don their swimming caps and dive into the film’s comic world.
Akin to “Dumb and Dumber,” the film is a road trip that abandons realism for a madcap comedy of errors. Screened at the 49th Denver Film Festival, the film turns the Colorado landscape into a backdrop for a comedy about escaping the routines that confine us. The reward is a lighthearted odyssey, reminiscent of a romp that trades plausibility for laughs.
Director Sheryl Glubok of “Welcome to the Fishbowl” walks the red carpet at the 49th Denver Film Festival. (Melodie Miller | CU Independent)
Glubok, along with Natalie Gold, Jeremy Swift and Marin Hinkle, spoke with the CU Independent at the Halcyon at Cherry Creek, a Denver hotel, during the 49th Denver Film Festival.
“The scenery is metaphorical,” Glubok said. “They start out very enclosed. Everyone’s in a fishbowl. They get out to the wide-open expanse of the western mountains. Western mountains change your perspective.”
Telluride celebrates the Big Literary Award. (Courtesy of “By And Large Medialabs”)
Setting the tone, the film opens with a buoyant, uplifting hand-drawn montage of artifacts strewn along a do-not-cross yellow-lined highway, suggesting the story is less about the destination of the Big Literary Award in Telluride and more about navigating the obstacles and chaos of life’s road trip.
“I wanted a title sequence; we don’t see them much anymore,” Glubok said. “It was really a signpost, kind of; little objects are obviously very special in the story.”
Natalie Gold and Jeremy Swift talk with CU Independent reporter Melodie Miller at the Halcyon at Cherry Creek, a Denver hotel, about their roles as Elizabeth Ford and Storm Grandquist in “Welcome to the Fishbowl” during the 49th Denver Film Festival. (Melodie Miller | CU Independent)
Gold grounds the film as Elizabeth Ford, a mid-40s mother and stalled writer who becomes the film’s steady center as she navigates the chaos that ensues while chaperoning Swift’s character, Storm Grandquist. Elizabeth puts her needs aside to clean up the bedlam, making sure everybody has what they need, Gold said. Along the way, Elizabeth rediscovers the writer in herself she set aside years earlier.
“Elizabeth embraces it. She embraces the chaos,” Gold said.
Swift plays self-absorbed but lovable Storm Grandquist, whose professional flashpoint unleashes personal chaos when he discovers his literary agent, Vivian Traquair, played by Hinkle, is secretly selling her business, leaving him stranded. Swift plays Storm with theatrical abandon and a healthy supply of well-timed one-liners. He brings a natural gift of comic genius to the film.
“It starts with the script,” Swift said. “He’s a complicated character, which is really attractive, and there’s really plenty to play. I certainly enjoy being rude and horrible with no repercussions because we’re acting.”
Swift said it was important not to play Storm as “one-note irritating guy.”
“I keep coming back to this phrase: we contain multitudes,” he said.
Vivian Traquair played by Marin Hinkle stops during the road trip to Telluride to snack on red licorice. (Courtesy of “By And Large Medialabs”)
Hinkle is sharp as the lady boss Vivian Traquair, who has decided that she is finished with her relationship to Grandquist and is moving on. As Vivian hits the road with Peter to find Storm and Elizabeth, she reveals her childlike vulnerability, wounds and regrets to Peter while holding a clump of red licorice, shifting the film’s narrative about the character and drawing the audience’s empathy for her decisions.
“It’s exciting to play a role that feels like maybe something I long for sometimes,” Hinkle said. “I feel sometimes afraid in my own life to do something, but somehow the condition is offered to a role; I get to try that on.”
Peter Ford, played by Sendhil Ramamurthy, talks to Natalie Gold, who plays Elizabeth Ford, before he leaves for work. (Courtesy of “By And Large Medialabs”)
Peter Ford, a successful attorney, played by Sendhil Ramamurthy, is endearingly hapless as Elizabeth’s distracted, overworked husband. Like Vivian and Storm, Peter and Elizabeth had drifted apart. When Peter heads to Telluride in search of Elizabeth, his uphill journey on a single-gear bike becomes a zany test of how far he will go for his marriage.
Harkening back to the 1930s and ’40s ensemble cast, “Welcome to the Fishbowl” fits into a long Hollywood tradition of screwball classics when films famously showed estranged couples finding their way back to each other.
Marin Hinkle, Jeremy Swift, Natalie Gold, and Peter Ford take time out from shooting “Welcome to the Fishbowl.” (Courtesy of “By And Large Medialabs”)
“Welcome to the Fishbowl” is ‘at the end of the day, a comedy of remarriage,’” Glubok said.
Beyond the stolen cars and the jailbreak, the film is about people stuck in their own fishbowls who break out for a second chance. It gives audiences a reason to laugh at their own lives.
Enjoy the trip. The film is a joyful ride.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Melodie Miller at Melodie.Miller@colorado.edu.
