Malcolm in the Mediocre (review)

What happened to them? Of course, we are happy to find Hal, Lois and their children. But Malcolm: Nothing Has Changed completely fails to recapture the spirit of the original, settling for a quaint melancholy trip. Did you say “Unfair”?

A big smile crosses our face when the credits for Malcolm start playing: nothing has changed. The song “Boss of Me” by the group They Might Be Giants has been somewhat remixed. Modernized. But we are on familiar ground. What a joy to find Hal and Lois in their house!

There has been some work, of course. The sofa has changed. The kitchen too. And they have obviously aged. The couple of outdated average parents have given way to a duo of retirees haunted by their heritage, this family that they took so much care to build through hardships and crises. So, to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, Lois wants to mark the occasion. She wants to bring everyone together. Her six children – she was pregnant in the last episode, so Kelly was born after Malcolm left for Harvard – are asked to be present. Except that Malcolm doesn’t plan to come. For years, he has methodically stayed away from his family, whom he considers toxic. And, obviously, it works for him…

Malcolm didn’t become president of the United States – as his mother wanted – but he runs a large philanthropic company that fights against food waste and tries to bring a little social justice to American society. And the others? Everyone followed the path that seemed to be laid out for them in the last seasons of the sitcom. No more. As fan fiction might have written it, this revival picks up the story exactly where it was supposed to be.

And very quickly, the smile fades. We understand that this revival will dive headfirst into the melancholy of what was. Lois shaves her beloved’s hair in the middle of the kitchen. Hal sinks into excessive introspection and talks with his other versions of himself. Dewey plays the piano. Francis tries to attract his mother’s attention at all costs. And Reese abuses parental love. The show multiplies the nudges to the fans without really trying to tell something exciting. Nothing has changed (from its awful little French title) is even far from being a comforting comedy, as most resurrected sitcoms can seek to be. This return would even be rather disturbing, concealing a form of unacknowledged sadness. In a way, this sequel 20 years later reveals the misery that hides (or was hiding) behind the twisted pranks and the XXL stupidities of the siblings. Like an autopsy of the vacuity of feelings specific to sitcoms. Morose…and not funny at all!

Of course, there is also nostalgia. Obviously, we appreciate seeing these characters again, and the production has achieved a little feat by bringing everyone back. Really everyone. Too many people. And suddenly a whole bunch of old faces from different seasons appear…

Too smooth, too conventional, this “all-star” revival fails to recapture the original spirit that made the series so crazy at the time. The new Malcolm attempts to do exactly the same thing, forgetting its fundamentals: this reunion takes the form of a two-hour TV movie – cut into four parts – which denies the episodic format, yet at the heart of the DNA of the sitcom. An essential format for the frenetic pace of this massacre game doped with “nothing to worry about”. The TV movie thus repeats its gimmicks ad nauseum, culminating with the famous evening of Hal and Lois’ 40th wedding anniversary, which turns into the most basic emotional drip. The fury of the original farce, its scathing sense of humor, its permanent inventiveness, this way of always striking where you least expect it, and in the middle the chronicle of a certain forgotten America… All this has disappeared to give way to a poorly digested medley of what was the essence of Malcolm at one time.

We ended up saying that all this fuss was just a pretext to relaunch the brand. Malcolm’s daughter (played by the luminous Keeley Karsten, one of the few good surprises of this revival) speaks to the camera, breaking the fourth wall – like her father before her – to talk about how out of step she feels with her high school friends. And suddenly, this return takes on the air of a pilot in disguise. It’s hard not to imagine that a spin-off crossed the minds of the producers. You never know if it’s a hit… And too bad for Malcolm’s old fans. Life is really unfair.