Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Family McMullen’ on HBO Max, Edward Burns’ warm, amusing legacy sequel to a mid-’90s indie sensation

The Family McMullen (now steaming on HBO Max) is the legacy sequel nobody saw coming. In 1995, 27-year-old Edward Burns premiered nothingbudget dramedy The Brothers McMullen, about three Irish-Catholic brothers from Brooklyn, at the then-in-its-heyday Sundance Film Festival, which began the film’s journey from a scrappy little indie-that-could to a financially and creatively successful indie-that-did. It launched Burns’ career, and although he’s since written, directed and produced 15 films, acting in all of them (and a few more, like Saving Private Ryan and Life or Something Like It), none broke out quite like Brothers McMullen. Hence the sequel, 30 years in the making, bringing back Burns and co-stars Connie Britton and Michael McGlone to reprise their characters, for a warmly funny story about the lives and loves of multiple McMullen generations.

The Gist: It’s Thanksgiving, an excuse to get all the family together and reintroduce them to us. It’s been a while, and unless you watch The Brothers McMullen habitually (not guilty!), you could use the reminder. We’re in Barry’s (Burns) home, as ever in Brooklyn; he’s a twice-divorced empty-nester now. His brother Pat (McGlone) arrives alone; his marriage hit the rocks and his wife booted him out. Their sister-in-law Molly (Britton) is also here alone; her husband, Pat and Barry’s brother Jack, died of cancer some time back. They purr over the turkey as Barry’s 20something children arrive. First is Tommy (Pico Alexander), nickname “Tommy Trouble,” and then his sister Patty (Halston Sage), nickname “Patty Perfect,” and just from those titles you know they’re opposite types. Patty tows along her fiancee Terrence Joseph (Bryan Fitzgerald), who nobody likes, possibly because he insists on being called Terrence Joseph at all times, but mostly because he’s kind of a twat.

I’ve already hinted at the impending pivotal plot point: Pat has no place to go, so he asks to stay with Barry, who agrees. Then Tommy reveals that he quit his tech job to pursue acting, and therefore needs to move back home, so back up to his old room he goes. Patty’s situation is a touch more complex. During dinner, all her dad and aunt and uncle can talk about is how problematic marriage can be, possibly because of their relationship hardships – you may recall from the first McMullen that Molly and Jack contended with his infidelity – but mostly because they’re trying to not end up related to a chode named Terrence Joseph. And it works! As soon as Patty and Toreass Dopeseph get home, he decides he wants to take Molly’s advice and date other people and get it out of his system before marrying Patty. They agree to a trial separation, but Patty isn’t happy about it. And so she ends up back up in her old room too.

From here, we work through a few too many cutesy  hey-Brooklyn-is-actually-a-small-town coincidences. Tommy meets Karen (Juliana Canfield), and while both exist on the playa spectrum, and insist they can’t be serious in a relationship, they fall in love. Karen’s mother, Nina (Tracee Ellis Ross) just so happens to be one of Barry’s friends with benefits from years back. On his way out of a rocky psychotherapy appointment, Pat bumps into an old friend, Susan (Shari Albert), who just so happens to be divorced. On the way home from Thanksgiving dinner, Molly bumps into an old friend, Walter (Brian d’Arcy James), who just so happens to be a widower too, and a real estate agent who agrees to help her sell the house she lived in with her late husband, the same house the McMullen bros grew up in. And one morning, depressed Patty is blasted in the face with water from malfunctioning plumbing, so her dad calls Sam (Sam Vartholomeos) to fix it, the same Sam who’s had a crush on Patty since they were kids who smooched while playing spin the bottle or whatever. Love – it just hits you outta nowhere from various contrived places, doesn’t it?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? It’s far too stupid to compare this to other decades-in-the-works legacy sequels like Top Gun: Maverick and the like. But Kevin Smith also launched nothingbudget debut Clerks at Sundance, enjoyed a career as an indie darling, and eventually followed up with a couple of sequels. Oh, and all those comparisons to Woody Allen that Burns got? Beyond a few surface similarities – New Yorkers, lotsa dialogue, relationship comedy – they don’t seem particularly accurate now. 

Performance Worth Watching: Burns has assembled a nicely appealing ensemble that reminds us how good old pros like Ross and Britton are, and gives younger-generation talents like Sage and Canfield smart, appealing characters to play.

Sex And Skin: Just a couple precoital and postcoital snuggles.

Our Take: At the risk of sounding like an old coot: They just don’t make ’em quite like this anymore. Is that necessarily a bad thing, though? Granted, we rarely see this type of adult dramedy anymore, essentially a stripped-down variation on formulas exemplified by Nancy Meyers and James L. Brooks (they don’t make movies like those anymore either, although Brooks’ first directorial effort in 15 years will debut soon). And in these gently funny and dramatic, never hilarious or histrionic ruminations on human relationships, Burns has a slightly bland but distinctive style encompassing a no-nonsense visual aesthetic and heightened, stylized dialogue-driven scripts.

Burns’ easygoing tone levels out some of the rollercoaster peaks and valleys of his Family McMullen screenplay. The opening Thanksgiving dinner scene establishes his elder characters as irritatingly meddlesome in the younger generation’s affairs, for the sake of some ineffective comedy, but Burns eventually abandons some of that nonsense to render these people more appealing. He contrives to pair every last character with a love interest, and gets more traction out of Patty/Sam and Tommy/Karen, because there’s still an element of youthful discovery to their dynamic, which draws in our rooting interest.

Thematically, the film is at-best loosely about how different generations overcome their heartbreak and relationship foibles. Less loosely, it’s about its own writing, because Burns a little too often pushes his scribely embellishments to the forefront. The script reminds us it’s A Script with chronic wiseassedness that’s occasionally offset with more appealing earnestness; internal monologues delivered via voiceover while the actors mug mime-like make for some pretty rough sledding. Burns plugs cliches from mainstream rom-coms into his indie aesthetic, and although this methodology doesn’t always inspire laughs or deepen the characters’ inner lives, he’s a veteran filmmaker who understands that tone modulation is crucial to connecting with an audience – an audience that’ll likely forgive this film’s unevenness for its warmth and familiarity. 

Our Call: Legacy sequels have infected EVERYTHING, even mid-’90s indie darlings that you wouldn’t think would ever inspire one. (I’ve got my hopes up for 9 Heads in a Duffel Bag, Los Mariachis or Another Slice of Pi). But The Family McMullen is engaging enough to remind us why Burns broke through decades ago. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.