St. Vincent: too much lovability and not enough roguishness from Bill Murray

Is Bill Murray fit for sainthood? Certainly his fans have him figure as some sort of lesser divinity, maybe one of the more saturnalian Greeks or pagans, with a taste for crashing karaoke parties with a pretty Dutch girl on their arm. How else to explain his mysterious deus-ex-machina drop-ins at random points around the globe — driving golf carts around Stockholm, reading poetry to construction workers in New York, acting as roadie at a rock festival in Texas? Where else does Murray’s power of deadpan derive if not the omniscience of a melancholic and slightly bored God, trying his best to wile away eternity? That’s why his best role continues to be Groundhog Day, in which he played just that.

More recently he’s started to show up in more earthbound form. He played FDR to perfection in Hyde Park on Hudson — his voice hoisted high in imitation of FDR’s patrician drawl, head thrown back in laughter, martini glass brimming o’er with Wodehousian good cheer, Murray didn’t disappear into the role so much as disappear into the air of moonlit mischief that hung over the movie, like a twinkly master of ceremonies.