Timothée Chalamet Made His Film Debut in This Strange Adam Sandler Dramedy

The Big Picture

• Timothée Chalamet is the rare actor that feels like a true movie star.
• Chalamet excels in playing a toxic antagonist in
  Men, Women & Children
  , which was an otherwise lackluster film.
• Chalamet’s performance in
  Men, Women & Children
  influenced his future roles, showcasing his potential in minimal screen time.

Some people may think that, based on the success of established franchises and superhero films at the box office, the age of the “movie star” is over. While there are certainly performers who retain a consistent level of quality within their work, there aren’t many stars that can generate enthusiasm for their upcoming work based on their name alone, and certainly not many who have emerged in the last decade.

The rare exception to that rule is Timothée Chalamet. The Dune: Part Two actor has worked with some of the industry’s finest filmmakers, pushed the boundaries of his acting abilities, and appeared in projects that are both critically and commercially viable. While he got his big break in 2017 with his brief performance in Lady Bird and his Oscar-nominated work in Call Me By Your Name, Chalamet’s film debut was in the offbeat ensemble dramedy Men, Women & Children alongside Adam Sandler.

What Is Jason Reitman’s ‘Men, Women & Children’ About?

Men, Women, & Children hails from director Jason Reitman, and is loosely based on the novel of the same name by author Chad Kultgen. While Reitman has been associated with his father’s work in recent years thanks to his franchise reboot Ghosbusters: Afterlife, it’s easy to forget that he was once an “award season” favorite thanks to a series of strong dramedies, including Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air, and Young Adult. While his previous work succeeded due to its strong lead characters and emotional specificity, Men, Women & Children is a broad attempt at a Robert Altman-esque ensemble dramedy about the challenges presented by the Internet. Attempting to summarize the various insidious ways that digital culture has harmed an entire generation proved to be no easy task, and Men, Women, & Children often feels like an antiquated warning from a filmmaker that is out of touch.

As the title would suggest, Men, Women & Children examines the perils of online obsession on the students and parents of a high school in Texas. While Reitman’s writing is often broad when it should be nuanced, Men, Women & Children nonetheless succeeds in casting actors against type. Central to the narrative is a relationship between the football star Tim Mooney (Ansel Elgort) and his crush Brandy Beltmeyer (Kaitlyn Dever), both of whom are under pressure based on their parents’ expectations. After Tim leaves the football team so that he can spend more time playing a popular online MMORPG, his father Kent (Dean Norris) struggles to understand his son’s behavior; Brandy’s overprotective mother, Patricia (Jennifer Garner), watches her online activity like a hawk out of fear that she will be exploited. Despite being generally happy when they spend time together in real life, Tim and Brandy struggle due to their vastly different experiences using the internet.

Despite appearing in the film for little more than a few scenes, Chalamet’s character is central to the main conflict in Men, Women & Children. As Tim’s relationship with Brandy begins to decline due to their respective relationships with their parents, he is put under pressure to reverse his decision regarding the football scene. This theme is reinforced by Chalamet’s character, Danny Vance, who constantly belittles Tim, claiming that his actions are those of a coward. While playing a bully was an unexpected move for Chalamet, Danny’s toxic behavior eventually elicits a violent reaction from Tim, who brawls with him in front of the entire cafeteria. It’s only after seeing what excessive reactions Tim is capable of that Brandy begins to reflect on the sustainability of their relationship.

Chalamet Is the Best Part of ‘Men, Women & Children’

Men, Women & Children is ultimately unsuccessful as a socially conscious drama because Reitman fails to invert any archetypes in a compelling way. While Men, Women & Children tries its best to evoke empathy for all of its characters, it becomes cloyingly sentimental when the film insists that characters like the neglectful husband Donald Truby (Sandler in a dramatic role) is worthy of sympathy. Thankfully, Chalamet succeeds by playing a genuinely obnoxious antagonist who isn’t worthy of redemption. It was important for the film to acknowledge that some people are simply nasty and mean, and Chalamet perfectly embodies a character that is instantly someone you will hate.

While he certainly adds tension to a film with significant pacing problems, Chalamet’s presence in the film makes Elgort’s performance stronger. Elgort has certainly played a teenage heartthrob in films like The Fault in Our Stars, but he struggles to make Tim as compelling of a character because of his dogmatic, isolated nature. While this could have made him emotionally impenetrable, Tim’s frustration with Danny’s aggressive tendencies causes him to finally lash out. Although his pent-up animosity has as much to do with his father and Brandy, it’s Danny who finally pushed him over the edge, suggesting that he is in need of a stronger support system.

‘Men, Women & Children’ Influenced Chalamet’s Other Roles

While Men, Women & Children has been largely forgotten since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014, the film showed that Chalamet could give a memorable performance with relatively little screen time. This was the same year of his performance in Christopher Nolan’s science fiction epic Interstellar, in which his role as the young son of Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) added more emotion to the epic space voyage at the film’s center. It’s somewhat amusing to watch both films in retrospect, as Chalamet’s minimal screen time is not reflective of the massive star he would become a few years later.

While it’s rarely ranked among his best work, there are echoes of Chalamet’s performance in Men, Women, & Children in some of his later films. Lady Bird saw him once again playing a toxic male character whose inability to recognize his friends’ feelings makes him an antagonist; he got to play another irresponsible teenage jerk in the underrated coming-of-age thriller Hot Summer Nights. While by no means one of Chalamet’s strongest movies, Men, Women, & Children may have been one of his most consequential.