Meet Bill

Meet Bill is the story of Bill (played by Aaron Eckhart), a man who is quickly realizing that his wife, weight, job and life are all out of control. His wife is cheating, his stomach is growing, his job is pointless, and he wants more out of life than what he has.

During a random encounter, Bill meets high school student known only as The Kid (played by Logan Lerman), and it is here that the story takes off.

Meet Bill starts off with a bang. We are instantly pulled into the life of Bill, can sympathize with him, and want the best for him. The movie shows great potential for the first 45 minutes as we meet the other cast of characters in Bill's life. We can sympathize with Bill, and ultimately feel good about cheering him on.

But then, somewhere halfway through this film, it unravels. Scenes start to feel pointless. The story meanders, and feels like the writers knew where it would take off, but not how it should land. The pacing becomes a slow, dull crawl. And at the end of the movie, in the last five minutes,
Bill completely falls out of character and decides to shirk everything the movie has built up to, and become a wandering nomad.

The actors do an amazing job with what they are given to work with, and I cannot fault any of them. Each actor threads the film together with great depth. Unfortunately the script doesn't give them much to hold together.

And ultimately, I felt empty as the credits rolled.

In `Meet Bill' Aaron Eckhart once again expands his career repertoire with a role we're accustomed to seeing Steve Carell play. As partial as I am to both actors, it's refreshing to see him play the fumbling underdog, closer to Carell's performance in `Dan in Real Life'. Too bad this sitcom worthy movie has little else to commend it. There are original, quirky elements, but the screwball execution is spotty for laughs and disjointed in parts.

Bill is in a middle-aged rut. Dependent on his wife Jess (Elizabeth Banks), he works as head of human relations at his father-in-law's bank. Jess looks healthy. She wears workout apparel and continually tries to prod Bill to adhere to his doctor's diet, one that eschews his coveted donut fix. At work he is like a dog on a leash. Not thrilled to begin with working under his father-in-law, Bill hates it when he's proposed to join their mentor program. He meets "the kid" (Logan Lerman) he's supposed to mentor in the bathroom, where Bill helps him hide the marijuana he flushes down the toilet before his school liaison catches him. Next, not only does he have to mentor "the kid," he has to go duck hunting with his in-laws and their sponsored teens. Being an animal lover, he becomes an awful shot, but provides some of the best laughs of the movie.

Getting chubby, the hubby suspects Jess is having an affair. Planting a camera beneath a translucent hat, he catches her in adultery with a local news reporter, Chip Johnson (Timothy Olyphant). Things go from bad to worse as Bill goes after Chip and the media gets a hold of the infidelity caught on tape. With nowhere to live, Bill turns to his gay brother, Sargeant (Craig Bierko*), a sporting goods store owner, and his partner Paul (Reed Diamond) to stay. A fitness buff, Paul tries to turn Bill's life around.

Bill wants to stay in his marriage while getting out of the bank. Jess hates the surveillance and doesn't say it, but Bill's slob appearance is indicative of his care for her as well. Forming a friendship "the kid" warms up to Bill before he can reciprocate. His friend and love interest, Lucy (Jessica Alba) seems much more mature than he, but she is a great resource for Bill. Both of them take an interest in getting Bill and Jess back together.

Although I don't condone illegal drug use, I have to admit it's a clever twist to have the mentor corrupted by his young apprentice. Eckhart plays a stoner scene like a pro as he and "the kid" go rock climbing in his brother's sports' store, easily one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

For all the oddball factors, 'Meet Bill' won't ruin your evening, but it won't provide the most compelling comedy, either.

(If 'Meet Bill' and 'The Forty Year Old Virgin' are any indication, most women don't favor men's body hair. So much for the old days when a hairy chest seemed to be coveted.)

A J.P.'s Pan 2.5 *'s= Mediocre-Good/Decent

(*uncredited according to IMDb)

Aaron Eckhart has been one of my favorite actors for years, he continually flies under the mainstream radar but makes every movie he is in, believable.

The first time directors (Bernie/Melissa) tackled a familiar topic in the mid-life crisis film, but since they had AE to carry it, everything came across beautifully. AE plays our married man Bill, as he unhappily fills an undeserved in-law position at a bank. His wife is played by Liz Banks, who I love from Scrubs, that helps lead an amazing supporting cast, including Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood), Jessica Alba, and Logan Lerman (3:10 to Yuma).

The story centers on Bill going through the motions of discovering marital infidelity, becoming a mentor for a smarter than his age school kid, while coming to terms with finding himself through some unorthodox avenues. Jessica Alba finally found a role that she was obviously relaxed with. Her entire presence was believable and she didn't have to wear a swimsuit, a tight blue suit or act scared - to do it. She does not play the love-interest as advertised, she just fills a role of helping out a new friend. I hope she does more films like this. Tim Olyphant has proven himself repeatedly, and I think even these slightly corny roles don't diminish his ability to be the hated character, yet still fun to watch.

This film will not appeal to the teens or older crowds, but probably along the same customer lines as Thank You for Smoking, another great Eckhart film. Good for a low-key movie night for that guy that might be in that similar "mid-life" stage. The laugh out loud moments and open ending make for a believable self-discovery film.

On this DVD release - the deleted scenes were all they included. No other ANYTHING to speak of, except for lots of additional First Look Studio previews, was disappointed on that.

The movie "Meet Bill" starts off slow and you might be thinking "why am I watching this?" If you just stick with it you won't be disappointed. It seemed like a predictable comedy/drama but the performances of the actors and actresses in this film make the story memorable and very enjoyable to watch. The first half of the movie is a bit boring and predictable but the second half makes up for it and becomes very entertaining. I think the boring beginning was actually essential to Bill's story anyway. I definitely recommend watching this movie. It made me laugh out loud at the end :)

I would also like to add that this movie lists Amanda Peet as being in the movie but she was not.

I received my DVD in just a few days, and it was in perfect condition.
The price was right too!!! Thank you!!!

I don't normally write movie reviews but the other reviews seem to be so off the mark that I feel I need to.

The basic story is that Bill is a guy living off his father-in-law's largess and is going nowhere. Aaron Eckhart plays him as a real slob and is generally an unappealing character throughout the film.

The two most interesting actors in the film and who make this film worth watching are Logan Lerman (as The Kid), a 14 year old student who is mentoring with Bill but who reverses the mentorship and basically shows Bill how have to fun again. Lerman plays the part exceedingly well, is tremendously believable and is consistently funny and a joy to watch. (For some reason, Lerman gets almost no billing in spite of the fact that he has the second largest part in the movie after Bill.) The other interesting actor is Jessica Alba who is simply beautiful and whose scenes with Lerman are a delight.

Logan Lerman is clearly an actor to watch and I strongly suspect he's the next Shia LeBeouf. I just hope he doesn't get dragged into those action thrillers that require very little acting as have many of our good actors (like Shia).

I gave this a single star. My sweetheart said she liked it and would have given it three stars. The scrip seems more or less written to TV sitcom level, i.e. fairly low. On TV it would blend in nicely with the general level of sitcom nonsense.

The major character, Bill, is a loser, and there is no reason to think that he would have ever been married into a successful family with a pretty wife. However Bill does have the insight that he is a loser and makes some effort to reform himself, but at the end of the movie when he decides to quit his marriage, quit his job, quit/ abandon his plans to run a donut shop to give him some income and self-respect, he seems headed to a even worse future since he wouldn't even be up to fast food employee standards.

A confession: I looked at this movie exclusively because of Jessica Alba's presence in it as eye candy. Jessica was fresh and alluring as always, and had the good sense not to let her character be exploited such as to lose her dignity.

Otherwise, this is a throughly forgetable film.

***1/2

Bill is in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis. Not only is he stuck in a job he hates (a made-up position at his father-in-law's bank), but his wife is cheating on him with a local news reporter. Meanwhile, his potbelly seems to be expanding at an increasingly alarming rate, a condition brought on by the massive quantities of donuts and candy bars he consumes daily out of nervousness and force of habit. Bill can't seem to step out of the shadows of either his wife's dad or the brother whom everyone seems to think is brighter, more financially successful and more all-around "together" than Bill is. In fact, the one hope Bill has of turning his life around may well rest with an Alex Keating-type prep school student he`s agreed to mentor as part of a program for entrepreneurial teens.

Written and directed by Bernie Goldman and Melisa Walick, "Meet Bill" ranges from the hilarious to the mildly amusing - with just enough dull patches thrown in to keep us from raving too much over its virtues or letting it too much into our hearts. The screenplay is frequently sharp in its comic portrayal of middle-aged angst, but it also feels vaguely rudderless, undernourished and underdeveloped for much of the time.

The real joy of the film lies in Aaron Eckhart's star turn as a man whose career and personal relationships clearly aren't what he'd hoped they'd be at this particular point in his life. He's nicely supported by Elizabeth Banks as his philandering wife; Logan Lerman as his preppie protégé; Jessica Alba as a lingerie salesgirl; Reed Diamond as his overly competitive gay brother-in-law; and SNL stars Kristen Wiig and Jason Sudeikis as donut-shop franchise owners who hope to go into business with Bill.

And speaking of the entrepreneurial spirit, a veritable goldmine awaits anyone savvy enough to market that amazing belly-busting weight-loss program Bill uses to great effect towards the end of the film.

When I first watched Meet Bill, I had my reservations about the film, because I had never heard of it through friends, family, advertising, etc.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the movie through, and have now seen it several times because I liked it so much.

Aaron Eckhart plays, basically, a very accurate depiction of a disgruntled male: his marriage is going down the tubes, he hates his job, has no idea how to have fun, and has no idea where he wants to be in life, yet knows he wants something more, something better. Throughout the movie, we learn about the tough situations in his life and how he deals with them (i.e. cheating wife, in-laws that only care about themselves), and feel badly for him, because his life just sucks.

Then, our main character undergoes a sort of personality transformation: he stands up for himself, finally, and acts out against the man that his wife is cheating with, gets himself involved in a program to assist high school students with banking and during this, meets an outgoing student that helps him come out of his shell and learn how to have fun and not take any trash from anybody. Along the way, Eckhart continuously does a great job of acting the role of a nice guy that realizes it is time he put himself first, for the first time in his life, and go out to get what makes him happy. Plenty of drama and chaos ensues, all of which is very realistic and does not ever feel overblown or too coincidental to actually happen to a real person.

The supporting cast includes Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Alba, both of whom perform well for the roles they were given. I have to say that this movie has quickly made its way into my Top 10, and this movie is definitely worth the money.

Meet Bill

I'd never heard of this movie and I bought it just because it has Aaron Eckhart in it. I was very pleasantly surprised. How many of you (like me) have looked into the mirror one day and thought, "What happened to me? This isn't me!" That's what happens to poor Bill. Unlike a lot of us, though, Bill takes steps to return to the old Bill. It's a very heartwarming story and I highly recommend "Meet Bill."