In “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” Sally Field summons her prowess as a two-time Oscar winner to deliver a tearful monologue to a mop bucket. True, special effects have put an octopus in that bucket, but picturing Field’s experience on the set is a lot more fun.
That the actress can wring even a hint of emotion from that scene is one of the few points of interest in this bland and sluggish feature, in which an aquarium cleaning woman (Field) and a washed-up guitarist (Lewis Pullman) emerge from their respective depths of grief with prodding from Marcellus, a cephalopod voiced by Alfred Molina, who sounds distractingly like Alec Baldwin.
Based on Shelby Van Pelt’s surprise-hit novel, and directed by Olivia Newman (“When the Crawdads Sing”), “Remarkably Bright Creatures” rests on a simple conceit. Marcellus lives in a fish tank; the cleaning woman, Tova, lives in a small town in Washington that is, Marcellus explains in voice-over, kind of like a fish tank: Tova, still bereft over losing her husband and son years earlier, can’t escape the gaze of gossiping neighbors. Still, any movie that takes veteran scene-stealers like Joan Chen, Beth Grant and Kathy Baker and reduces them to clucking caricatures — they play Tova’s knitting circle — doesn’t really seem interested in human beings.
Tova gets a cure for her loneliness when Cameron, the guitarist, arrives in town and takes a temporary job at the aquarium. Cameron is looking for the father he never knew; in Tova, he finds someone who can get his life on track (and set him up on a date with a local paddleboarder, played by Sofia Black-D’Elia). Then there’s that aging octopus, whose last act on Earth will be “to help the cleaning lady and the juvenile.” How nice of him. And while being cynical about a wise-octopus movie is probably unfair, being bored by it isn’t great, either.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Rated PG-13 for discussions of death, loneliness and aquatic captivity. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
