BEFORE: OK, Super Bowl watched, snacks consumed, commercials judged, and now it's back to the Romance Chain - and the countdown to Valentine's Day next Sunday.
Chris Messina carries over from "Manglehorn", that's four in a row for him, but that's his limit on romantic movies, it seems - new link tomorrow.
THE PLOT: An offbeat romantic comedy about a silver-painted street performer and the soft-spoken zoo worker who falls for him.
AFTER: After three appearances in supporting roles (lead's father's lawyer, lead's furniture customer, and lead's investment banker son) Chris Messina finally takes center stage tonight as half of this movie's lead couple. He plays Tim, a man who puts on silver make-up and stilts every day and stands somewhere in downtown Detroit, waiting for someone on the street to pay him money to do his "mechanical man" routine, which is really just a variation on the "robot" dance.
Perhaps there's not much money in being a mechanical man street performer, but Tim's got his own reasons for doing this, which are revealed when he's interviewed on the local news by their "man on the street" human interest reporter. Tim believes that modern life can be alienating, that many people are just mindlessly walking through their lives, like robots. So he wants other people to know that he gets it, and they're not crazy, and if anything, he's crazier than them, so therefore they're not so crazy after all, right? The only problem is that his girlfriend has been waiting for him to give up the silver paint and the stilts and get a real job, and after waiting so long for this to happen, and determining that it's not going to happen, she moves out.
Janice, meanwhile, is working a number of temp jobs and hasn't really found her place in life. She hasn't excelled at any of the jobs the temp agency has sent her out for, and in fact they've received several complaints. Eventually her landlord gets tired of reminding her that rent is, in fact, due on the first of the month, and she's forced to move in with her younger sister, Jill, who's always putting Janice down while at the same time, trying to over-plan Janice's life to make it better (aka "more like her own"). Jill and her husband, Brian, keep trying to set Janice up with Doug, a motivational speaker who pretends to be an expert on everything, or at least he's written several books about everything and also nothing at all, and his seminars try to teach people how to be great conversationalists, but are also filled with terrible advice.
The editing alone tells us that Tim and Janice are going to have their stories intersect, which happens several times, once while Tim is dressed as the mechanical man, and again when they both apply for jobs at the Detroit Zoo. Tim gets a custodial job there (really, every entry-level job is "cleaning cages" when you think about it) and Janice sells juice by the gorilla exhibit. They really bond when an over-zealous zoo patron starts poking the monkeys. They decide to "hang out", which is code for pre-dating, or dating someone without bringing attention to the fact that you want to date them, from there they can decide if they really want to date, or just stick with "hanging out" (aka "the friend zone").
The problem is that Janice has already agreed to go do dinner with Doug, and though it's not a date to her, Doug's a huge douche who just sees Janice as another conquest. He's like a low-rent version of that motivational speaker that Tom Cruise played in "Magnolia". We can tell he doesn't care about anything but sealing the deal and adding another notch to his bedpost, and I think Janice sees right through him, but is just too polite to come out and tell Doug she's not interested.
So Doug (while disguised as the mechanical man) sees Janice out on a not-date with Doug, and assumes that he's missed out on Janice, but he really doesn't know the whole story. And it's perhaps a bit of a stretch to have Janice talk to Tim (while disguised as the mechanical man) without realizing that it's the guy she's got a thing for at the zoo. But that's neither here nor there, I suppose, what's important is that Janice finally learns to assert herself after years of being a doormat, and finally takes steps to get the life that she wants and the relationship that she wants, after learning that it only takes one person to believe in you and care about you to get the confidence to make things happen.
This is, perhaps, only slightly misguided because true change really should come from within and not be dependent on another person's love, but maybe in this case some allowances should be made. At least the leads are both quite likable and the audience can share in their feeling of accomplishment when they finally get on the same page. A bit predictable, maybe, but it gets to where it needed to go.
Also starring Jenna Fischer (last seen in "Are You Here"), Topher Grace (last seen in "In Good Company"), Malin Akerman (last seen in "The Proposal"), Lucy Punch (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Rich Sommer (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Sean Gunn, Travis Schuldt, Sarab Kamoo, Jennifer O'Kain, Nick Holmes, Matt Champagne (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Robert Maffia, with archive footage of Charlie Chaplin (last seen in "Joker"), Buster Keaton.
RATING: 6 out of 10 penguins marching in a line
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