​The Meyerowitz Stories should be a film that hits close to home.  I, like Ben Stiller’s Matthew, do not have a close relationship with my family.  I moved across the country, putting hundreds of miles between myself and them pretty much only because I could and I wanted to.  I don’t go home for holidays.  I don’t particularly feel bad about any of that, despite a barely-audible, Danny-like voice in my ear wondering if maybe I should.  The part of The Meyerowitz Stories that rhymes with my life, however, is also the one that makes this a frequently irritating film.  I was just talking with Blair about how freeing it is to decide to not care what your parents think of you, and to see the characters here make their lives worse in pursuit of their shitty father’s approval is me knowing better than them, and I don’t know anything.  Director Noah Baumbach repeatedly returns to films about sons and fathers, usually about the latter being too self-absorbed to care about the former.  This is his most intense examination of that theme, but he covered all of it 13 years ago with Squid and the Whale.  It’s one thing for teenagers to wake up to their father being human and fallible and a dick.  It’s far less appealing when adults do the same.