No Address

by Mike McGranaghan

No Address left me absolutely baffled. The film desperately wants to say something about the homeless epidemic in America. What it ends up saying is…that there’s a homeless epidemic in America. All the good intentions in the world can’t compensate for a lack of focus or the absence of a cohesive plot. An eclectic ensemble cast is left to overact wildly as they try to find the meaning in a picture that has none.

Most of the characters live in a Los Angeles tent town. They include drug addict Violet (R&B singer Ashanti), seen-it-all old guy Harris (Xander Berkeley), adrift foster child Lauren (Isabella Ferreira), dementia-ridden former actress Dora (Beverly D’Angelo), and runaway Jimmy (Lucas Jade Zumann). Then you’ve got Robert (William Baldwin), a struggling real estate agent hoping to run these folks off a piece of land he desperately needs to rent out, lest he become, well, take a guess. For good measure, the movie also throws in Bloodrayne star Kristanna Loken as Robert’s wife and, strangely, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition host Ty Pennington as a hardware store owner.

The characters aren’t people, they’re message delivery systems. The amateurish screenplay saddles them with stilted dialogue intended to comment upon how hard it is to be homeless. Each of them also comes with an individual arc that builds to a predictable, cliched conclusion. Jimmy left home because his mom chose her alcoholic boyfriend over him. Robert and his family might end up losing their house because he sucks at his job. (Oh, the dramatic irony!) You get the idea.

Lingering around the edges is a dumb subplot involving a group of crooks repeatedly attempting to steal everyone else’s food stamp cards. That’s in addition to the needless romance between Jimmy and Lauren, plus a forced-in religious component. It would have been nice if the film had picked a lane and stayed in it, rather than trying to include something from nearly every cinematic genre.

For a movie that so openly expresses concern about homelessness, No Address weirdly trivializes the issue by presenting it in a shallow, melodramatic manner. It is completely lacking in nuance, from the autopilot form of storytelling to the annoying, sappy musical score that constantly tells you how you’re supposed to feel. Every minute of the running time is a virtual bludgeoning of the viewer. Worst of all, it offensively relies on a deus ex machina to solve the group’s problem at the end. Apparently, the homeless epidemic has a miracle solution.

No Address is so relentlessly maudlin that it becomes unintentionally funny at times – which is obviously not the reaction you want, given the serious subject matter. The movie doesn’t tell you anything about homelessness that you don’t already know, nor does it provide any fresh insight into the topic. It’s really just two hours of the filmmakers patting themselves on the back for being socially conscious.

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