St. Vincent

A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

St. Vincent works largely because of Bill Murray, whose performance as a caustic, hard-living neighbor charmed audiences more than it fully won over critics. The gap between enthusiastic audience reception and more measured critical opinion tells the real story: critics found the film genuinely funny and Murray magnetic, but many felt it leans too hard into redemptive sentiment by the end, undercutting what could have been a sharper, less conventional character study.