Jim Rash writes funny, patient scenes about people who do not quite know how to behave. We value his attention to awkwardness, though the shared screenplay for The Descendants sometimes explains what the actors have already made clear.
Fi1m perspective
In The Descendants (2011), George Clooney's hesitation makes his uncertainty plain without the voice-over's help. This is the central reservation about Jim Rash's otherwise funny, patient writing: he can give an actor something worth playing and then supply instructions for watching it. We were moved by Clooney's uncertainty because his hesitation felt more truthful than the accompanying explanations. Rash shares the screenplay with Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon, so its strengths and weaknesses cannot sensibly be assigned to him alone.
His Groundlings improvisation background feeds an approach built around character and collaboration. Community (2009) shows what he can do with a character as a performer. The costumes and his devotion to Jeff make Dean Craig Pelton conspicuous, but Rash keeps the repeated joke funny. We found him the funniest recurring presence on the campus. Rash also wrote and directed for Dan Harmon's programme, though its ensemble success should not be treated as evidence of his writing alone.
In The Descendants, the partnership works best when it gives the cast room to be awkward. Kevin Tent's editing preserves those pauses, and the comedy benefits from time that a busier film might have cut away. Clooney and Shailene Woodley do the most persuasive work, while Payne's family drama is prepared to wait for them. Adapting Kaui Hart Hemmings's novel, the writers become less trusting as the film continues, adding explanations where the performances have already been clear. The second half could be tighter, but the patience is worth preserving.
The partnership with Faxon moved into directing with The Way, Way Back (2013), a coming-of-age comedy-drama drawn partly from Rash's life. They later co-wrote and co-directed Downhill (2020). The smaller scale of these stories is no failing in itself: a family can provide quite enough bad behaviour for one film. What we want from Rash is more trust in the pauses and less assistance in interpreting them. Start with The Descendants, with some tolerance for a voice-over that does not know when to stop.
Biography
Jim Rash is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He was born on 15 July 1971 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Rash is best known for playing Dean Craig Pelton in the NBC series Community (2009–2015), in which he also wrote and directed episodes. He began his career with the Groundlings improv troupe in Los Angeles and appeared in smaller roles in films and series including Sky High (2005) and Friends (2004).
With Nat Faxon, Rash co-wrote the screenplay for The Descendants (2011), which won the Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award and Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The pair later wrote and directed the films The Way, Way Back (2013) and Downhill (2020).
