Craig is a sharp kid. He’s got a cool, supportive family. He goes to an elite Manhattan high school and will probably be accepted into an elite pre-college business program. He’s crushing on his best friend’s girl, and his best friend is kind of a dick, but otherwise Craig has a pretty good life.

Craig is also suicidal.

Anyone who thinks the first paragraph and the second ought to be mutually exclusive does not understand clinical depression—nor, necessarily, do Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the writer-directors of It’s Kind of a Funny Story. The filmmakers set their film in a mental ward, but it’s rarely clear whether they want you to laugh or cry at its long-term residents, the sight of whom nearly scares Craig (Keir Gilchrist) sane after he talks an ER doctor into admitting him. (Doc doesn’t think his suicidal tendency is serious.) The patients stare and shuffle, shout random thoughts to no one in particular, never get out of bed. When Craig first meets them—mouth agape in horror—he asks the staff if there’s a place “for people more like me.” Cue audience laughter?

To be fair, the teenager is mildly rebuked for thinking himself better than the others; still, many of these patients are too caricaturized for you to believe they’re there for anything but a giggle. It’s rather heartbreaking—you know their real-life counterparts exist—but so is the flip side: When Craig shows up at the emergency room at 5 a.m. asking for help yet is nearly sent home because he just seems like a kid with the blues, the doctor is both throttle-worthy and completely realistic. Few people who look at Craig see someone mentally unbalanced. Those who do, including the ward’s psychiatrist (Viola Davis), stress medication and communication about the pressures he’s feeling. Even Bobby (Zach Galifianakis), the middle-aged eccentric who takes Craig under his broken wing, seems to recognize a kindred walking wounded.

Until he doesn’t, that is. As Craig adjusts to life in the ward, befriending the freaks and chatting up the cute girl (a luminous Emma Roberts), Bobby’s relative togetherness starts to unravel. Slowly, the guy with the dry humor, dating advice, and short-escape plans isn’t so smooth when he has to face life outside the hospital. Which is also believable—but then the character turns into another there’s-nothing-wrong-with-you sounding board, suggesting that a little perspective is all a suicidal teen needs to climb out of a soul-sucking depression.

The message is contradictory at best and dangerous at worst, though it seems that Boden and Fleck, the team behind the indie hits Half Nelson and Sugar, at least intended to make a life-affirming film. Just as there are aching moments, there are soaring ones, including a shoulda-been-hackneyed group performance of “Under Pressure” and a jubilant going-away party. And the topic certainly isn’t too sacred to be mined for humor. (“I want to kill myself,” Craig tells the intake staffer. “Fill this out,” she replies.) The unimpeachable highlight of the film, in fact, is Galifianakis, who’s understated and charming as the melancholy Bobby; turns out that the lower the actor dials it down, the higher his appeal.

Gilchrist, best known as the gay son in Showtime’s The United States of Tara, is rather vanilla here, as the filmmakers clearly poured their colors into supporting characters. But the story may not have worked had Craig been a stronger personality. His milquetoast demeanor is what propels the debate over exactly how much help he needs. If only the answer wasn’t so fumbled and disappointing.

Life as We Know It Directed by Greg Berlanti

Life as We Know It, in contrast, knows how to take serious things seriously. Despite the presence of Katherine Heigl, director Greg Berlanti’s second film is more drama than romantic comedy—and a good drama at that. The plot’s not the only thing that offers something unexpected.

The film does begin with some typical Heiglisms. She plays Holly, a Type-A caterer who’s scrambling through her closet of at least 27 dresses until she finds the tightest wrap and the highest heels. Then she waits. When her blind date, Eric (Josh Duhamel), shows up, he’s an hour late. When Eric takes an obvious booty call and responds, “Really?” when Holly suggests they don’t have to go through with their mutual friends’ setup, they both get huffy and pretty much declare themselves Enemies for Life.

Cut to a couple of years later, when their besties Peter and Alison (Hayes MacArthur and Christina Hendricks) get married and have a baby. Through each of the milestones up until baby Sophie’s first birthday, Holly and Eric are shown fighting. So it’s a bit of a shock—though not so surprising in Movieland—when the happy couple dies in a car accident and leave custody of Sophie to the two people who can’t stand each other. Hijinks will surely ensue, right?

Mercifully, there are hardly any at all. First-time scripters Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rush Robinson deliver a story that quickly forgets its wacky introduction yet never brushes off the devastating turn of events that truly sets the plot in motion. Peter and Alison’s deaths are handled with understated taste—and are all the more gut-wrenching for it—and the needs of darling Sophie (played by triplets Brynn, Brooke, and Alexis Clagett) are kept in the foreground. Holly and Eric, after the requisite wha-wha-what? moment in which they learn of their new responsibility, don’t whine or bicker over stupid shit. Yes, they doubt they can make their situation work. No, they’re not happy about the upending of their lives.

But when Sophie is hungry or needs to be changed, it’s all about her, even if said changing elicits gagging and lines such as, “It’s like Slumdog Millionaire!” This is, after all, a comedy, but the jokes are generally dry and original and help the whole baby business be cute instead of cloying.

The romantic angle has to play out, too, but here the baby isn’t as much of a roadblock as Sam (Josh Lucas), a handsome pediatrician whom Holly meets at her bistro the day of her friends’ death. Of course, rom-com rules require that they meet again afterward, and get along quite swell. Of course, Eric is a little jealous. And with both Holly and Eric devoted to their careers (Eric works in broadcast sports and is eyeing a promotion), some crazy schemes will be hatched to smooth over the bumps in their schedules.

Hey, this film may not be exactly what you’re expecting, but the filmmakers and the marketing campaign can’t completely ignore the carrots they dangle. Life as We Know It is both feel-sad and feel-good, which is a tricky balance yet one that’s so satisfying when the film hits the right marks. “Hit” is not a word our stars may be used to when it comes to the big screen—at least not critical ones, anyway—but this movie may change that.

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

Considering Woody Allen, 74, makes a film a year, the question to be asked is not why so many of his movies are uneven, but why so many are to be treasured. Even in this past decade, there’s been Vicki Cristina Barcelona (2008), Match Point (2005), Hollywood Ending (2002), and Small Time Crooks (2000). Although none achieve the magic, wit, or depth of Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), or Annie Hall (1977), they all are embraceable entertainments, worthy of numerous viewings.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, however, is middling Woody. Not unwatchable as The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) or as annoying as Melinda and Melinda (2004), the film still has a rushed quality to it. The proof is a horrendously off-putting voiceover (supplied by a dreadful Zak Orth) that is consistently employed to fill in plot points the screenplay is unable to incorporate with any grace.

The tale centers on upon a divorced couple, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones). After 40 years of wedded life, Alfie has developed a fear of aging and winds up marrying Charmaine (Lucy Punch), a youngish prostitute, whom he satisfies with the aid of Viagra and his dwindling bank account.

A distraught Helena, at loose ends, seeks the aid of Cristal (Pauline Collins), a fortune teller, who convinces her of her former glamorous lives and a future romance.

Meanwhile, the marriage of the ex-couple’s daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) to a one-time promising writer, Roy (Josh Brolin), is falling apart. She’s attracted to her boss (Antonio Banderas) and he has the hots for his neighbor, a young guitar-playing woman in red (Freida Pinto).

All the ingredients are here for a successful Woody romp, but they never gel. Bookended between Shakespearean quotes and the tune “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the film seems more the product of a work-for-hire sensibility than an inspired act of love. The bon mots are few and far between. The cinematography by Vilmos Szigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) is seldom flattering to the stars. And numerous scenes are awkwardly staged.

Yet Jones as the alcoholic, dithering Helena, Collins as her soothsayer, and Roger Ashton-Griffiths as her new beau, are splendid, and Lucy Punch steals the show. As she did in Dinner for Schmucks playing the nightmare ex-date of all time, Punch supplies a high-powered comic energy that makes you mope every time the camera leaves her presence.

In conclusion, my prognostication for this bit of celluloid is that it will encounter a short, overlooked run in the theaters and be favored with a few clicks now and then on Netflix. As Woody himself has noted, “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” – Brandon Judell

Mr. Judell is featured in the forthcoming documentary Activist: The Times of Vito Russo and has been edited out of Rosa von Praunheim’s New York Memories. In the fall, he’ll be teaching “American Jewish Theater” and “Theater into Film” at The City College of New York. He has written on film for The Village Voice, indieWire.com, The New York Daily News, and The Advocate, and is anthologized in Cynthia Fuchs’s Spike Lee Interviews (University Press of Mississippi).

FILM  MOVIE REVIEW

Slackers as seen in Paul Gordon’s The Happy Poet. Photo: Paul Gordon

The Happy Poet **

by Jesse Cataldo on September 12, 2010 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

There’s definitely potential for humor within the realm of the green movement, with its locavore restrictions and organic produce, wholesome things that are just geeky enough to tease. Yet a film primarily about such a specific movement risks diminishing its reach, both through the insularity and modesty of its topic. This is the eventual result of The Happy Poet, a diffident, occasionally sly comedy that could have benefitted from a little more energy and range.

Nevertheless, it’s easy to forgive the problems displayed here, most notable being the lackadaisical personalities of the movie’s main characters. They speak in a natural style that’s often too authentic, replete with dumb comebacks and thoughts that trail off into silence. If dramatic realism was director’s Paul Gordon’s aim, this might be a plus, but this is a comedy, where real life needs to be leavened with some measure of humor. As it stands, The Happy Poet is still a relatively sophisticated example of the genre, weird, hopeful, and full of ideas.

A sharp wit is certainly buried somewhere beneath all the self-conscious mumbling that dominates the film’s discourse. The plot centers on Bill (Gordon), an Austin idler who leaves his corporate job to open a natural food stand. This dream is immediately punctured in the first scene, when a less-than-ample loan leaves him stuck with a converted hot dog cart, paid for on the installment plan. Bill decides to soldier on anyway, setting up shop in a downtown park, stocking his cart with hummus and eggless egg sandwiches.

The Happy Poet will inevitably draw mumblecore comparisons, both for its examination of a subculture and the inelegance of the character’s speech, but it separates itself by avoiding the willful ugliness and that so many of those films present. Gordon knows how to compose a shot, not in any virtuoso style, but carefully enough that many of his scenes attain a roughly handsome beauty. The message and story, aside from some hurried third-act resolution, match this intelligent carefulness.

A more accurate reference point might be Richard Linklater’s Slacker, linked further by the shared Austin pedigree. Yet this film, fully dedicated to a conventional narrative structure, isn’t nearly as experimental or vibrant. If it dared to be more of anything, faster or broader or stranger, it might even be great film. But like its sad-sack main character, whose closed-off personality makes him hard to fully understand or sympathize with, The Happy Poet is too reservedly rough around the edges.

• Director(s): Paul Gordon
• Screenplay: Paul Gordon
• Cast: Paul Gordon, Jonny Mars, Chris Doubek, Liz Fisher
• Runtime: 85 min.
• Rating: NR
• Year: 2010

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-By David Noh

For movie details, please click here.

Darren (Dax Shepard) and Annie (Katie Aselton) have been together a
while and are totally comfortable with each other. Maybe too
comfortable. Sex has become a very sometime thing with them,
although they certainly enjoy being in bed together, doing their
respective crossword puzzles. They decide to grant each other a
single night of infidelity.

Who, in any long-term relationship, hasn’t entertained the notion
of straying? It’s an endlessly intriguing concept and
writer-director Aselton at first seems game, but I wish her
approach had been more headlong, rather than sideways, as is all
too apparent in The Freebie. Darren and Annie are just too
nice, too ordinary and bland to engender much viewer passion in
their passion. They have that affectless Gen-Y (or is it Z by now?)
quality which is inoffensive to the point where you crave a little
blatant vulgarity, any sign of real, roiling life.

Humor is often the glue which holds such long-term relationships
together, but there is very little of it here (that placid
crossword puzzle activity says much). A couple of dinner party
scenes with friends whose yuppie talk rather goads them into action
provide a little respite from all their cocooning. The most
interesting scene is their first discussed broaching of adultery,
but it’s something of a chore to sit through, what with Aselton’s
meditative pacing and smothering use of close-ups.

The two finally get off their duffs and go trawling, he to a comely
neighborhood barista he’s eyed for a while and she to the local
bar. Stuff seems to be definitely happening, but then Aselton coyly
cuts away from any real—excuse the expression—climaxes, as if
operating under her own self-imposed Hays Code. It’s all, of
course, meant to suggest that imponderable mystery of human choice
and behavior (yawn), but it merely further renders totally sexless
a film purporting to be about sex. The great Hungarian playwright
Ferenc Molnar, in his play The Guardsman, knew how to use
this type of suggestiveness for real provocative wit rather than
irritating obfuscation.

When literally comes the dawn—to add even more antediluvian
flavor—and the two must fess up, Aselton goes all traditionally
moralistic. Darren says that he couldn’t go through with it, and
then rages at Annie for doing what he shied from, and calls her a
whore. “But I really didn’t!” she pipes, and you know what? We
simply don’t give a f*** about their f***s.