Movie Review: ‘Ex-Husbands’ Takes a Unique Spin on Mid-Life Crises

In the grand, modern tradition of Noah Baumbach or Nicole Holofcener, Noah Pritzker’s Ex-Husbands is the latest small-budget character drama centered around contemporary, upper middle class, big city, neurotic, chain-smoking Americans.

It’s one of the most niche subgenres in cinema and the one right up my alley. While I didn’t appreciate this as much as Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples (2024), it might still appeal to those who are fans of indie dramedy.

After family patriarch Simon Pearce (Richard Benjamin) is moved into a nursing home with late-stage Alzheimer’s, his son Peter (Griffin Dunne) is sent divorce papers by wife Maria (Rosanna Arquette), while their own son, Nick (James Norton), is about to get married to girlfriend Thea (Rachel Zeiger-Haag). When Peter accidentally schedules a personal vacation at the same location and date as Nick’s bachelor party, the two men, plus youngest Pearce son, Mickey (Miles Heizer), must come to terms with their various crises.

Ex-Husbands is Pritzker’s second feature length film as a writer-director following Quitters (2015) a decade ago. The new film hit the film festival circuit back in 2023 but is just now getting an official release.

What drew me to Ex-Husbands besides the basic concept is the cast. Benjamin and Dunne in particular are inspired casting as father and son, and Norton and Heizer really do feel like they could be brothers. It’s always nice to see Arquette pop up in a new film too.

Pritzker’s script is pretty low stakes when it comes to story and progression, and the themes and structure are familiar territory for this type of movie, especially if you’ve seen Baumbach’s Marriage Story (2019) and Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings (2023). I don’t think Ex-Husbands succeeds any more than the previous two flicks did, but that’s not always a bad thing.

Here it’s more about resolving conflicts of multiple generations within a family in an old vs. new way. Peter is an aging, successful dentist and family man; Nick is 36, anti-social and just now settling down; Mickey is gay and starting his career.

The man closest to having a mid-life crisis is amusingly Nick more than Peter. So, unless you’re the type of movie viewer who can’t get into the milieu of Woody Allen or Neil Simon , you may find Ex-Husbands worthy of a late-night viewing.