Breckin Meyer has been a consistently charming but underrated actor, even if his credits are littered with big hits. Ever since Clueless (after years of work as a child actor), Meyer’s been an endearing part of numerous comedies like Rat Race, Garfield, and Road Trip, along with being a leading comedic presence in major shows like King of the Hill, Franklin & Bash, and Robot Chicken (not to mention the several sitcoms he’s carried that aren’t as well remembered, such as The Home Court and Married to the Kellys). Meyer’s proven himself to be a great comic talent, not just in his performances but his scripts (writing for 44 episodes of Robot Chicken, along with writing and creating the comedy series Men at Work).
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That’s why it’s so shocking to see Meyer open his new film, The Enormity of Life, with a melancholic suicide note followed by a nearly successful attempt. The camera lingers on him for an excruciating amount of time as he hangs himself, flailing in pain for an interminable period until the ceiling fixture collapses, dropping him to the ground. Meyer plays Casey, a hollow man overcome with sadness, whose botched suicide attempt seems to be acknowledged as just another of his long litany of personal failures and disappointments. It’s a powerful opening to a surprising performance from the very funny actor.
Breckin Meyer Gets Dramatic
Anhedonia Pictures
Meyer has been excelling at drama recently (The Fix, Designated Survivor), but nothing in his filmography is like The Enormity of Life. So why such a markedly different role? “I was immediately intrigued by it because it deals with subject matter that you don’t always see, and especially you don’t always see done in this way,” Meyer tells us. “We’re dealing with mental illness and dealing with depression.” Casey’s mother suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to a devastating degree, and worries that some of his issues are hereditary; nonetheless, he’s taken care of her on and off for decades, and now she’s gotten herself into a difficult legal situation. Meanwhile, a distant relative has left Casey over $300 thousand, though he seemingly couldn’t care less. Meyer describes his character perfectly:
A rare surprise enters Casey’s life, however, shaking things up for likely the first time in a while. Jess (Emily Kinney), a snarky waitress, is a single mother to Jules (Giselle Eisenberg), a precocious and profane child obsessed with school shootings. Through happenstance and serendipity, the three of them embark on a kind of road trip to deal with Casey’s mother, Jules’ neuroses, and Jess’ struggles.
Casey suffers from anhedonia, which means he basically feels nothing. He gets no pleasure. He gets no joy out of work money, sex, women, life, TV, and that doesn’t just mean someone’s a zombie, because they are constantly trying to fit in. You want to feel, and even if you’re not feeling, you want to pretend that you do for everyone else. It’s like when you hear a joke, if you’re in a crowd and everyone else laughs, and you don’t get it, you still laugh at it with them, you want to be a part of it.
I think Casey’s big thing is — I want to be ’normal,’ whatever you would call that. I want to be one of the masses. I want to be invisible. I don’t want to stick out. I don’t want to be Waldo, where everyone’s spotting me because I’m the one who’s clearly not feeling anything. So I think Casey is kind of trying to stay below the radar, and in doing that, he’s got to pretend a lot of times to feel things.
The Enormity of Life is an Anti-Rom-Com of Sorts
At times, it feels like the recipe for the kind of quirky romantic comedy one might have seen in As Good as It Gets or Flirting With Disaster, but The Enormity of Life never treads expected patterns, certainly in its last act, something which adds authenticity to this depiction of mental health struggles.
The Enormity of Life certainly has rom-com beats, but its ultimate tone and trajectory make this a much darker, introspective drama with some warm moments of humor, something Meyer embraced. “I was on for the ride from the beginning,” he says, “unless you want to U-Turn it and make it a very Hollywood, ’love conquers all’ [movie], which is a great thing and works in Pretty Woman, and it works in a lot of romantic comedies, but it didn’t ring true for me in this. It wouldn’t have been doing the subject matter justice.” There’s a pleasantness and obvious entertainment value to a “Hollywood” love story, but many times it’s just a hollow reflection of wishful ideals. Meyer elaborates:
The direction itself, from first-time feature filmmaker Eric Swinderman, frequently mirrors Casey’s headspace by flattening the tone and homogenizing the frame with deep focus. Swinderman also ensures that The Enormity of Life never exceedingly lingers on a rom-com trope, effectively jarring the viewer with some extremely disturbing moments which elucidate Jules’ mentality, as well.
You can’t just find somebody and your life changes. Love is a really, really powerful thing, but so is the human brain, so there’s depression, and there’s anhedonia […] I know a lot of people who do wish they could just take a pill, snap your finger, and just be different, and Casey would love that, but as this movie shows, you can’t buy it. You can’t inherit it. You can’t just manifest happy if your brain doesn’t let you.
The Enormity of Life Addresses School Shootings
One of the more interesting (and tonally surprising) things about The Enormity of Life is how it balances the mental health issues of its adult male protagonist with that of a young girl, showing both the biological and cultural origins of illness. Jules has never experienced a school shooting, but between the onslaught of reports about mass shootings in America and the violence portrayed in media, she’s rightfully terrified of them (and Eisenberg gives a wonderful performance that Meyer can’t praise enough). However, while Casey may be too old to make a sudden breakthrough, Jules is young enough to possibly move forward, marking an interesting contrast in the film.
This was another element that strongly resonated with Meyer. “I have an 11-year-old, and she came to me one day, obsessed and scared of tsunamis, because she’d watched a YouTube video about tsunamis, and it was scary but also intriguing,” Meyer says. “I think that reflects a lot on Giselle’s character, which is what the current kids are dealing with. They’re inundated with images and stories of violence and blood and scary things, and also things that are intriguing, but where do you draw the line, and how do you parent that?”
“I think that’s one of the big problems for Jess with Jules,” he continues, “is how do you deal with a kid who knows all these facts about school shootings and things? Because you don’t want to say you can’t learn that stuff. But you also want to recognize that there’s a lot of good in the world, and maybe don’t focus on just the negative. I think this movie hopefully shines a little bit of light on that.” Meyer does an excellent job portraying anhedonia and depression here, but as a very talented comedic writer and actor, he’s been very good at injecting levity and not focusing on the negative.
Breckin Meyer on Robot Chicken
Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution
Meyer’s gift for levity is currently best seen on the great stop-motion animated comedy series Robot Chicken. For 17 years, it’s been lovingly skewering pop culture and its obsession with franchises like Star Wars and the MCU. “We actually just got nominated for an Emmy,” Meyer says, referring to the show’s 23rd nomination (after six wins). “Robot is my favorite, it’s my day job, and I love it. I started doing it with Sethy [Seth Green] 15 years ago, and truthfully, to be able to work with your best friend for that long and have that much fun and goof off is great.”
Robot Chicken recently finished its strong 11th season and is the longest-running Adult Swim show, and has no plans of slowing down according to Meyer. However, the main issue with writing animation is usually timing. “It takes 11 months from script to screen, so when you write a skit, it really better be relevant in a year,” Meyer says, but he already has ideas for the 12th season. “I guarantee there’s going to be some Thor stuff, even watching Thor [Love and Thunder] I was having ideas of what I want to do for Robot. I’m sure we’re going to throw in some Squid Game stuff.”
“It’s still so much fun to do,” Meyer says, elaborating on how the charm of Robot Chicken hasn’t faded for him even after all these years. “It’s also the only place I’m gonna get to play something like Superman, Jesus, Lindsay Lohan, and Boba Fett on the same day. And they already make The Mandalorian, and they already have The Book of Boba Fett, so that’s probably the best place I’m going to be able to play a Mandalorian. Unless Jon [Favreau] lets me be on the damn show. We’ve got to talk to Favreau,” he half-jokes, “he’s been on our show, so it only seems fair that we’re on his show.”
Full of comic energy and joyful gratitude when discussing Robot Chicken, it’s really remarkable that the same man wholly inhabited a character with anhedonia and deep reservoirs of sadness and pain in The Enormity of Life. It’s a testament to Breckin Meyer’s underrated skill, and perhaps an opening to even more dramatic work in his future. In the meantime, there’s always Robot Chicken. The Enormity of Life is available On Demand and Digital starting July 22nd, and on DVD and Blu-ray on the 26th.
