Pain, Parties, and Unspoken Truths

Read Time:5 Minute, 15 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Ex-Husbands (DVD)
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Genre: Drama, Comedy
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 39m
Director(s): Noah Pritzker
Writer(s): Noah Pritzker
Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Richard Benjamin, James Norton, Miles Heizer
Language: English and Spanish with English subtitles
Where to Watch: Available now. Order your copy here: www.kinolorber.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: It’s always interesting when a film puts down the megaphone and leans into a whisper instead. EX-HUSBANDS doesn’t announce itself with spectacle or shocking twists—it operates in the quiet space where uncertainty, disappointment, and self-reflection sit side by side. Instead of trying to impress through chaos, it focuses on something more elusive: the emotional disarray of ordinary lives at a standstill.

At the center is Peter Pearce, a dentist whose life has been coasting on inertia until it starts sliding into entropy. Divorce looms, his kids have drifted into their complicated lives, and his father, once a stubborn figure determined to start over in his twilight years, has faded into silence. That generational echo—the idea that endings don’t come with explosions but slow, relentless erosion—is baked into the story’s structure. Nothing crumbles, but everything quietly comes undone.

The decision to sidestep traditional dramatic points defines EX-HUSBANDS and occasionally holds it back. There’s a reluctance to push buttons too hard. That restraint works in some scenes, where small interactions carry surprising weight but leave parts of the film emotionally stuck. A little more momentum could’ve gone a long way, especially as the story dips in and out of the characters’ lives without always deepening the arcs.

Griffin Dunne gives Peter a charm that anchors the entire piece. His performance never screams for attention—it’s the kind of acting that lets awkward pauses, unsure stares, and half-finished sentences do the talking. You get the sense that Peter isn’t trying to win sympathy so much as figuring out where it went. Dunne captures that paralysis beautifully, making even the quietest moments speak volumes. He’s not asked to reinvent the character type, but he gives it layers worth watching.

That observational tone stretches to how the film handles Peter’s sons. Nick is slogging toward a wedding he can’t seem to get excited about, weighed down by untreated depression. Mickey is navigating the early stages of coming out and the confusion that comes with wanting something real but not knowing how to get there. These stories never explode into subplots. Instead, they sit beside Peter’s, quietly mirroring his uncertainty. It’s subtle character work that avoids big speeches or revelations, though sometimes at the cost of impact.

The choice to bring all three men together in Tulum—where Peter unintentionally overlaps with his son’s bachelor party—could’ve been the setup for chaos, but EX-HUSBANDS has no interest in clichés. It trades chaos for quiet: no wild parties, no fights, just emotionally guarded conversations in scenic settings. There’s beauty in the restraint, and the cinematography reflects that with a soft, clean visual palette that leans into natural light and warm tones. Tulum is less of a paradise and more of a reflective surface where each character confronts their baggage.

One of the more noticeable gaps in the film is how it handles its female characters. Maria, Peter’s estranged wife, is used more as a narrative device than a fully realized person. Her role is to show Peter’s emotional state rather than offer her perspective. For a story so invested in emotional honesty, this imbalance undercuts its effectiveness. You can sense the film trying to say something universal about relationships, but it lands more one-sided than it needs to.

Similarly, EX-HUSBANDS juggles several themes—aging, masculinity, mental health, emotional repression, identity—but doesn’t always follow through. The film opens these doors but rarely walks through them. It nods toward important questions but backs away before offering a deeper look. That light touch can be powerful in the right moments, but it sometimes feels like the movie is holding back out of fear of being too direct.

That said, when the film does click, it finds an honest emotional note that sticks. Small gestures—fixing a crooked picture, tossing out old belongings, watching your son walk away after a half-hearted conversation—feel heavy with implication. These moments work best: quiet, human, and unspectacular. They suggest that even in stuck lives, meaning still exists if you know where to look.

EX-HUSBANDS isn’t perfect. It misses some opportunities, leans too heavily on tone over depth, and occasionally gets stuck in its sense of stillness. But it also captures something real about emotional limbo—how it feels to be lost in the middle of your life, trying to figure out what matters now that the blueprint has burned. That kind of story might not blow you away, but it lingers, and sometimes that’s more valuable than being unforgettable.

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[photo courtesy of KINO LORBER]

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