BEFORE: OK, I had one actor appear live in that "Dungeons & Dragons" movie and then carried over to "GOTG 3" with a voice performance, and now another actor who did a voice in that same film carries over to a live-action appearance. There's some balance in nature, or something. Judy Greer voiced a CGI character called "War Pig" in that Marvel movie, and she also appears in this one.
We got back Sunday from three days in Massachusetts, we helped (a bit) with the packing up of my parents' apartment, and I sat with them in their hotel room while the movers and my brother-in-law packed up the truck, then he drove off with their furniture on Saturday and we bought them dinner from their favorite Italian place, then on Sunday after breakfast (and church, for some reason...) my sister loaded them into the van and they all headed for North Carolina, while we drove back to NY. Mixed emotions for sure, because they've always lived in that suburban Boston area, so this is a huge chance, and I won't be able to visit them as often in the future now. But they weren't getting the supervision and medical care they need, so hopefully living with my sister will provide that.
I also feel quite guilty that I'm not contributing to their care or their upkeep, but then again, I never have in the past. They had worked things out financially where they could move out of their house and into assisted living if needed, but then as time wore on things got more complicated and more expensive, forcing the move. Also it seems like they've lived longer than they expected to, which should be a good thing.
THE PLOT: Dispatched from his basement room on an errand for his widowed mother, slacker Jeff might discover his destiny (finally) when he spends the day with his unhappily married brother as they track his possibly adulterous wife.
AFTER: I'm kind of torn on this one, because it seems like just a short (83 min.) little indie feature that's not really ABOUT much, there's some relationship stuff in here but maybe not enough to qualify it as a romance, and honestly, not much even happens during the course of the film. Or, does it?
The other way to look at this one, maybe, is that perhaps it only appears that not a lot is happening - there's certainly not much action or violence or family squabbling - but then maybe a lot is going on beneath the surface, there's some subtext about Jeff being a complete fuck-up who had to move back in with his mother while he smokes a lot of weed and doesn't look for a job. Look, I feel you, Jeff, OK? This was supposed to be the summer where I landed a better job, maybe even my first full-time gig, and I could move on and move up from my job where I've really stayed much, much longer than I should have. I get that feeling of being paralyzed and filled with doubt, because what if I quit my job and then there's nothing else out there for me? Or worse, I take a new job and I hate it even more than the job I have now? These are the things that worry me, so I don't make that move or change anything, and life just keeps going....
Jeff is also obsessed with the movie "Signs", and the apparent lesson that he learned from the film is that minor details, like where you leave glasses of water around the house, could be very important and if you wait long enough and pay close attention, you should get some kind of signs from the universe that you're where you're supposed to be, or at least on the right track. Can I take some kind of lesson from Jeff taking that lesson from the movie "Signs"? Like, when I go back to my second gig in a few days, am I going to get some kind of sign that I belong there, or perhaps some kind of sign that I don't, and I should move on? Man, that's tricky, I mean, like what happens if you don't get any kind of sign at all, do you just stay the course, or do you then feel like you don't have much of a future at all?
I do try to look for lessons in the films I watch, or at least connections to what's going on in my life - for example, this film is all about somebody dealing with his older sibling and being kind of a screw-up by comparison - I certainly felt that way over the weekend when my sister arranged all the moving and packing, while I was just sent to get take-out meals each evening, and this just let me to feel very pissed off because I was just sent out like an errand boy, I didn't get to choose the restaurant, just told where to go and what to order, and then I didn't even get reimbursed for the meal. (I paid for dinner on Friday AND Saturday night, but I didn't even eat any of Saturday's meal, I went out with a friend instead - so is that fair? I'm not going to complain because my sister paid for the moving van, the transport van, and she has to buy them meals all the way to North Carolina...and then all their meals after that, so maybe I'm luckier than I feel.)
There's also a bit where Jeff's brother, Pat, finds his wife at a Hampton Inn with another man, possibly having an affair with him. Well we did stay at a Hampton Inn this weekend, gotta love that "free" hotel breakfast, it's delicious but then you have to deal with a room full of parents with small kids, and maybe some foreigners. On Saturday I had breakfast at my parents' hotel, which was a Marriott Residence Inn, and OK, breakfast is really the same everywhere you go, but it was a classier vibe of eggs, bagels and cereal at the Marriott. Plus the other guests were friendlier and I had a few polite conversations there with the hotel guests, and instead of parents with kids and foreigners, I definitely got more of a "swingers convention" vibe at the Marriott. Too bad there was no way for me to find out if I was right about that.
Anyway, Jeff kind of follows the "signs" and gets distracted while on an errand for his mother, to get some wood glue at the Home Depot so he can replace the missing slat in the shutters. Jesus, Jeff, if you're going to live in your mother's basement you should be able to complete a simple little chore, once in a while! But instead he follows a man with the name "Kevin" on his basketball jersey off the bus, because he'd been getting wrong-number phone calls at home asking for "Kevin", and the coincidence was too great to ignore. This led him to play in a pick-up basketball game with the Kevin in question, and this led to... well, no spoilers here, but there's something of a domino effect at work here.
Through many twists and turns, the odd effects of this random day do end up serving a higher purpose, or so it seems. Jeff eventually finds himself in a position where he can do something very heroic, and then you have to wonder about how if any of the previous events of the day had shaken down differently, then perhaps Jeff wouldn't have been in that right place at the right time. So, what does that mean, was there a secret purpose to the whole day, or is everything just random? Also by the end of the day, Pat's rocky relationship with his wife seems to be in a much better place, and even his mother has found love after being contacted by a secret admirer at work who contacted her via AOL instant messenger. (Geez, remember that? How old is this movie? 2011? Were people still using AOL back then, or had text messages already caught on by then?
This is another film written and directed by the Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark. While I may not have seen every film that they've directed, produced and/or starred in, and I don't seek their movies out like I do for, say, Wes Anderson, I've still seen a bunch of them - they produced "Horse Girl", "Duck Butter", "Outside In", "Blue Jay", "Adult Beginners", "Manson Family Vacation", "The Overnight", "The Skeleton Twins", "Safety Not Guaranteed" and "The One I Love", and also wrote "Cyrus" and "Table 19". That's a pretty decent track record - though I'm still not sure which of those count as "mumblecore" and which ones don't. So I think maybe today's film is worth a try, and if it's not your thing, well at least then it didn't take up too much of your time.
Also starring Jason Segel (last seen in "Windfall"), Ed Helms (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Rae Dawn Chong (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Steve Zissis (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Evan Ross (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Zac Cino, Joe Chrest (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Robert Larriviere (ditto), Matt Malloy (last seen in "Outside In"), JD Evermore (last seen in "Broken City"), Katie Aselton (last seen in "The Tomorrow Man"), Ian Hoch (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Wally Crowder, Deneen Tyler (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys") and the voice of Jennifer Lafleur (last seen in "The Skeleton Twins")
RATING: 6 out of 10 office cubicles near the water cooler
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