Ben Stiller's 'Greenberg' tries to fit in

Ben Stiller has the title role in "Greenberg" as an angry middle-aged misfit who visits L.A. to housesit for his big-shot brother and take care of his dog.

The dog's a German shepherd whose name in a "Larry the Cable Guy" movie might have been Mauler, but here is almost certainly Mahler.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and The Whale") understands privileges and pretensions of people with a surplus of money and education, and loads his movies with details that deftly explain and skewer his subjects.

We note that Greenberg's brother is casually leaving for a family vacation in Vietnam, and just as casually dumping the details of the planning and preparation on Florence (Greta Gerwig), their housemaid/nanny/domestic slave.

When Baumbach is at his best ("The Squid and the Whale") this kind of behavior registers as both uncomfortable and funny, when he's not ("Margot at the Wedding") it's just uncomfortable.

Baumbach's often at his best in "Greenberg," joint-venturing with veteran comic Stiller to find something amusing/touching in the character's misanthropic behavior.

Greenberg is an L.A. refugee returning to the coast after a prolonged interlude of failure in New York, which ended with a breakdown and psychotherapy. If the therapy helped, it doesn't show. The reclusive Greenberg is quick to insult, slow to apologize, prone to rant, and most comfortable alone, composing letters to many corporations that have offended him (Greenberg's arrested development is a theme - the digital world has moved on, he's still writing longhand.)

It's Stiller's job here to indicate why Greenberg isn't merely repulsive, and on that count he succeeds - he's able to show us, somehow, that almost every hostile encounter starts out as a genuine attempt to open a line of communication. There's a human impulse in there somewhere. You can see in Stiller's face the frustration he feels that he can't break out of his behavioral pattern.

This dynamic is most apparent in Greenberg's fitful romance with poor Florence, a relationship noteworthy for its excruciating awkwardness.

Florence battles Greenberg's hostility, and keeps trying to jump-start things - actor Gerwig makes us believe in Florence's persistence, but the better she does, the more troubling "Greenberg" becomes, and the closer Florence comes to being a doormat.

Women, especially, have chided Judd Apatow for creating female characters who are unbelievably tolerant of his immature, unsuccessful male protagonists. But there's nothing in Apatow as fantastic as Florence, whose masochism seems a dangerous precursor to abuse.

The movie fares much better when focused on the relationship between Greenberg and an old friend (Rhys Ifans). He tries to help Greenberg re-enter society, while at the same time trying to hold together his own fraying family.

He, like everyone else, treats Greenberg delicately, but has a nice scene in which he finally notifies Greenberg that it's time to get his act together. A moment like that for Florence would have helped.

Produced by Scott Rudin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, music by James Murphy, distributed by Focus Features.