Perhaps it’s fitting that talking about I Melt With You means talking about all the things it tries — and fails — to be. The story of a boom-and-bust weekend shared by four reuniting college cronies, I Melt With You is driven by music from its title on, setting the perennial crisis in middle-aged masculinity to glittery eighties beats. An industrial grade melodrama with more cuts than a pound of Bolivian marching powder, the movie aspires to all sorts of aesthetic heights — from Reagan-era reckoning to Iron John implosion to feature-length video for a Jay McInerney cover band. That might make it sound like more fun than it is: Although a stark performative moment here and a cold, sexy shot there slip through, all of the film’s lesser ambitions are undone by its most risible one — to be serious, and thus be taken seriously.
First-timer Glenn Porter’s script is divided into days, like a crime procedural, or a disaster film. On the first day, they gathered. The first to show up at the Big Sur palace inexplicably inhabited by failed author and English teacher Richard (a voracious Thomas Jane) is Ron (Jeremy Piven), an equities trader wading in both paper and calls from the SEC. Then come Tim (Christian McKay), who fills his days being gay and depressed, and Jonathan (Rob Lowe), a divorced doctor with a very flexible prescription pad. Upon convening the drug vortex opens and quickly sucks the quartet in. They bond by executing white powdered donuts around each…
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