Paul Reiser and Colm Meaney Bicker

“The Problem With People” starts with a montage of the many wars and conflicts happening in the world right now. A dying Irish man, Fergus (Des Keough) bemoans this crushing violence affecting humanity as his TV blares out the news. It’s the broadest starting point in a film that always chooses the broadest jokes and situations. While the comedic script, written by the film’s star Paul Reiser with Wally Marzano-Lesnevich, favors stereotypes to specificity, director Chris Cottam keeps the rhythm humming nicely enough for its 100-minute running time for the film to be mildly amusing. 

Before he goes, Kes wants to settle at least one war: the one raging inside his own family. Many years ago, his grandfather had a falling out with his brother, who then immigrated to America. He tasks his son Ciaran (Colm Meaney) with contacting his long-lost cousin Barry (Reiser) in New York to initiate a family reconciliation. Before long the American makes his way to the tiny Irish village where his cousins live. Ciaran is a modest, salt-of-the-earth type, Barry is a brash real estate tycoon. The resulting conflict between their different cultures and personalities is so standard, the script could have been copied and pasted from other situation comedies.

Predictably, the village is full of quirky personalities: a multitude of characters who are always ready with an amusing quip in the background, commenting on the action like a Greek chorus with Irish accents. None of them are written with any specificity, though the actors manage to land the lines and elicit a few chuckles here and there — except for a tiresome twosome who try to speak with a Brooklyn accent for the entirety of the movie. The comedy relies too much on the audience’s familiarity with this concept and with well-known cultural references. There’s nothing original here.

Meaney and Reiser rely on their known personalities to play off each other. As Barry’s daughter, Jane Levy is wasted in a role that has her character mostly responding to her father’s shenanigans with gentle disapproval on the phone. As the plot thickens, the affable camaraderie between the cousins escalates to hostile animosity. Comfortable in front of the camera, the two actors make the ludicrous proceedings jovial enough. What started as an homage to 1983’s masterful comedy “Local Hero,” a film directly referenced here several times, winds up feeling like a nicer, more compassionate remake of “The War of the Roses.” No matter how much Ciaran and Barry try to one-up each other, they remain sweethearts who can’t really do any harm. While this makes for easy watching, it also robs the film of an edge. But there’s comfort in knowing this will end happily for everyone involved.

Cottam stages the crowd scenes well and manages to wring a few hearty laughs. In collaboration with cinematographers Richard Kendrick and David Odd, he shows Ireland in all its beauty. He even shows a long animated sequence to tell the backstory of the familial conflict, adding a touch of originality.  “The Problem With People” is slight and entertaining. Just like old man Fergus, audiences might be looking for a break from the world being on fire. This might not provide much of a respite. It’s nice enough but only partially engaging, offering a brief distraction from bigger problems.