Chabert Watch: Reach for Me (2008)

Watched:  05/29/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  LeVar Burton

So.  Interesting, small, indie movie with some name talent.  I kept wondering how this was pulled off, and then the movie ended with "Directed by LeVar Burton" and the lightbulb went off.  Who doesn't love LeVar Burton?  And if you don't think he's great, we can't be friends.

And when I say name talent, I mean Chabert, of course.  But also Seymour Cassel, Alfre Woodard, Adrienne Barbeau, Larry Hankin, and Burton himself.  I am not familiar with actor Johnny Whitworth, one of the major leads, but he was good!

The movie is... odd.  It's about Alvin (Seymour Cassel), a patient in hospice who is facing his end.  He loses his roommate (Hankin) who he kind of got along with - but maybe not as well as he believed. Alvin's an old, sad and angry asshole, and a letch who grabs the butts of the volunteers.  He talks about sex like he's in a a dorm trying to impress wide-eyed Freshmen as a Sophomore.  

When Hankin goes, Alvin receives a new roommate who is a young man dying of cancer.  The young man's girlfriend is Chabert, a 3rd grade teacher with a love for art and travel.  The two are scrambling for time together as this seems to have all struck before they could get married.  

Barbeau plays a woman in the hospice who warms up to Alvin.  

It's basically a carpe diem movie, and it hits some inevitable and predictable beats.  They are in a hospice, after all.  

The movie swings between humor and pathos, often cutting the morbidity with the kind of gallows humor one can develop in the hospital.  The humor can be raunchy and ridiculous, but it feels like it's not just there to shock, there's a point to it all.  

I am not surprised that everyone in this is actually good.  One does not just roll in Alfre Woodard and not get Grade A material.  But it's also a movie directed by an actor - someone who was going to work to make sure the actors got time to sort out their scenes.  I can see how Burton was interested in taking this on as it's the kind of stuff actors probably want to chew on.  The specter of certain death!  Love!  Star-crossed love!  Second chances!  

But it's also super depressing, so fair warning.  It becomes less about what will happen, which feels inevitable (and maybe a tad predictable), but how they'll do it.  And kudos to Chabert and Whitworth for their scenes together.

I guess my biggest question watching the movie is:  is anyone in a hospice doing as well as the people in this hospice?  It's treated almost like a nursing home, and that's not generally been what I understand hospice to be - I was under the impression it was palliative care.  Which would undermine a huge chunk of the film.  But I'll let it go and say "well, that's this hospice".  Or "maybe I don't know."

Is it stupid?

No.  I can see younger, would-be-cynical viewers struggling with it, but as you get maybe a bit older, you may see what this is all about.

It sits just on the right side of being overly predictable, but I think the material - people sitting in hospice waiting to die - is not the easiest sell.  So I'm not shocked this didn't become a crowd favorite.

Chabert is actually very solid in this.  She's asked to do a lot, and play tragedy, which is not what she gets called on to do very often.  And that's what's so wild about tracking Chabert across what will be something like 75 movies (yeah.  I know.).  What can an actor do given the chance?  What will they do that surprises you?  And, in the case of this role, why wasn't she really given a chance to do anything like this again?  Is it just the state of the industry?  What was offered to her.

When Chabert hit a certain age - her twenties - many of the roles were kind of what was out there for women at the time.  She kinda/ sorta had to skirt along the edge of "I'm hot now" roles that seemed part and parcel of child actors entering the mainstream, but she dodged making that her signature.  I can say I've seen her take on everything from coked-up party girl in Fatwa to the thankless role of "girl" in A New Wave.  So to see her get to do something that feels so grounded is great.  Good on Burton and casting for bringing her in.