Although it feels like a resounding paean to the city that bears its name, the most entertaining element of “Lost & Found in Cleveland” is its locations, locations, locations — widescreen images by cinematographer Davon Slinger provide an engaging, eclectic tour of one of the cities the film showcases . It’s also strangely behind the times. Otherwise, this fine, if uninspiring, film from actors-turned-writer-directors Marissa Guterman and Keith Gerchuck offers a fun-enough serious comedy that straddles the terrain of Richard Curtis and Christopher Guest, without approaching the high points of either . The familiar faces and story beats of the Newport Beach Fest world premiere feel better suited for home viewing.
A retro-pop opening montage of Bobby Darin singing “Artificial Flowers” — a dissonant “Mack the Knife”-like brass arrangement of a sombre ode to a slum tragedy from the 1960 Broadway musical “Tenderloin” — introduces the characters, as well as the feeling The growth of this Midwestern city stopped several decades ago. It’s almost Christmas, but most of the central characters here are down in one way or another. Many are pinning hopes on the impending tourist stop of “America’s Favorite Televised Antique Appraisal Show,” in which travel experts evaluate the “junk or treasure” that’s been “hiding in your closet.” (Mark L. Wahlberg, formerly of the long-running actual “Antiques Roadshow,” plays the host of the fictional “Lost & Found.”)
Dennis Haysbert is cast as a mole-less mail deliverer to fulfill his dream of opening a restaurant to showcase his beloved late mother’s recipes. Retired veteran Stacy Keach descends into a state of dementia, coupled with recurring flashbacks to his service in the Korean War, while his librarian wife, June Squibb, tries to keep him present in the here and now. Widowed waitress Yvette Yates Reddick and her misfit nine-year-old son Benjamin Steinhauser are still mourning the man of the house — a vacancy not filled by her gruff current boyfriend (Rob Mayes).
On the more comedic side, Lisa Weil from How to Get Away With Murder and Gilmore Girls plays a socialite who married into money and lives in an old-fashioned mansion. But her son is in college, her doctor husband is happy to work abroad (he’s currently spending two years in Abu Dhabi), and she’s left with nothing to pursue her ambition, except for her hyper-resistant teenage daughter (Vanessa Burghart). Well, she also has a large statue of the goddess Juno, which she is determined to prove to be priceless antiquity.
Most ambivalent about the “treasures” in his possession is university lecturer Santino Fontana, the new resident alongside his wife, dentist Esther Povitsky. She rambles on about the exact thing he’d like to keep secret, and which may have gotten them expelled from their former community: a huge collection of embarrassingly racist Aunt Jemima-style tchotchkes, inherited from his grandmother.
Once the “Lost & Found” crew arrives for a day’s filming, the trend shifts toward the cynical world of “Best in Show,” where the actors exploit various types of frivolous and competitive personalities. Jeff Hill and Rory O’Malley play a feisty gay couple whose pride is largely directed toward fellow octagon Loretta Devine. Dot-Marie Jones is the event’s grumpy house manager, while Martin Sheen and Jon Lovitz appear briefly as a high-ranking antiques expert and the town’s mayor, respectively. The director’s screenplay achieves a satisfying tying up of all the threads in this climactic stretch, even if there is little surprise in the way the heroes get their hopes dashed to the precise degree to which they were naughty or nice.
In fact, the main problem here is that the material is formulaic without being particularly funny or moving within those limits, and its stabs at weirdness are rarely developed in a way that this able actor can fly with. Aside from the surreal humor in an early scene at the Presidential Museum, there’s nothing of the grade-schooler’s obsession with the less-than-singy President William McKinley. Other tidbits of local historical interest (including links to the “Wizard of Oz”) are thrown in somewhat randomly, to no particular effect. Attempts at banter tend to be more sour than clever, the occasional gags sometimes fall flat, and a truly rare left-field idea – such as the fantasy of Haysbert’s production number involving dancing chorines – is too weakly executed to be realised. Each character has one recurring tune to play, whether comic or sad, which reduces the intended payoffs of hilarity or heart-tugging.
However, “Lost & Found in Cleveland” is one of those movies that has enough superficial polish to convince viewers that they’re having a good time, even when it becomes clear that individual components aren’t all that fresh. Editor Tricia Holmes’ deft pace makes two hours pass painlessly. Music supervisor Jim Black documents the soundtrack with the kind of pre-rock kitsch (by Guy Lombardo, Paul Whiteman, Frankie Laine, Doris Day, Henry Mancini and others) that lends a nostalgic bounce and a vaguely satirical sheen to the proceedings. The compelling photographic coverage of Cleveland’s somewhat faded architectural splendor is matched by Christine Adams’s production design, whose interiors fondly reflect the lack of interest and/or funds needed to update the decor, which remains frozen in bygone eras. The piano and orchestral strings of Sven Faulkner’s original score support the more emotional corners of the screenplay. It all adds up to entertainment that’s not very good, but combines pleasantly.