HANDSOME: A NETFLIX MYSTERY MOVIE (US - 2017) Directed by Jeff Garlin. Written by Andrea Seigel and Jeff Garlin. Cast: Jeff Garlin, Natasha Lyonne, Christine Woods, Steven Weber, Amy Sedaris, Eddie Pepitone, Leah Remini, Timm Sharp, Brad Morris, Ava Acres, Kaley Cuoco, Joe Kenda, Hailee Lautenbach, Dave Sheridan, William Standford Davis. (Unrated, 80 mins) Best known for his years as Larry David's manager and best friend on CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM as well as for the ABC series THE GOLDBERGS, Jeff Garlin is one of those comedian's comedians, a guy respected by his peers and with a lot of friends in the business. Garlin's attempts at branching out on his own, writing, directing, and starring in indie films, have yielded mixed results. 2007's I WANT SOMEONE TO EAT CHEESE WITH was a surprisingly heartfelt MARTY homage that did a nice job if balancing the discomfort comedy of CURB with some genuinely solid dramatic work from Garlin as an overweight aspiring comedian who lives with his mother and is trying to find his place in the world. By contrast, 2013's abysmal DEALIN' WITH IDIOTS was a near-laughless, self-indulgent dud that was little more than an excuse for Garlin and some comedy buddies to hang out and pretend they were making a movie.
Garlin's latest effort as a writer/director/star is the Netflix Original film HANDSOME: A NETFLIX MYSTERY MOVIE, which doesn't have much of a mystery since it opens with a fourth-wall-breaking intro that has co-star Steven Weber announcing "I'm Steven Weber, and I play the killer in this Netflix mystery movie and multi-platform event" before the opening credits roll. It's not exactly the best way to keep the audience on the edge of its seat in anticipation like, say, Edward Van Sloan at the beginning of FRANKENSTEIN. Garlin is affable L.A. homicide detective Gene Handsome, who catches a case with his partner Det. Fleur Scozzari (Natasha Lyonne) that's conveniently close to home: his new single mom neighbor Nora's (Christine Woods of HELLO LADIES) babysitter Heather Dromgoole (Hailee Lautenbach) is found decapitated, with the rest of her body dismembered and arranged into a macabre Star of David on the front lawn of famous movie star Talbert Bacorn (Weber). The investigation leads Handsome and Scozzari to sleazy Lloyd Vanderwheel (Timm Sharp), the owner of a fireworks distribution center called Fireworks! Fireworks! Fireworks!, who hired Heather to spy on his ex-wife--wait for it--Nora, to get dirt on her for an upcoming court case over custody of their daughter Carys (Ava Acres). Of course, Handsome starts to have feelings for Nora, while nympho Scozzari keeps hooking up with Lloyd, who's still a suspect. But the trail keeps taking them back to the arrogant Bacorn, the kind of asshole who pronounces the word "premiere" as "prem-yay."
Judging from its structure, HANDSOME looks a lot like a feature-length pilot for a potential Netflix series. Handsome and Scozzari have the kind of back-and-forth banter that TV cop partners have; Handsome is in charge of a group of incompetent rookie detectives--headed by the hapless Burt Jurpis (Brad Morris), who sees the condition of Heather's body and her severed head at the crime scene and immediately declares "This looks like a driveby"--who seem to be a wacky supporting ensemble but vanish from the movie; and Handsome is always getting his ass chewed out by his boss, Lt. Tucker (Amy Sedaris), who's also pretty brazen about sexually harassing him ("By the way...my tubes are tied"). HANDSOME has some legitimately funny bits in the early going, with humor ranging from quirky to raunchy, whether it's Handsome citing SAN ANDREAS as his favorite movie ("Best absurdity ever!" he raves), Scozzari's unfiltered commentary ("I'd bend him over and eat popcorn out of his ass," she says of Bacorn, and later, after a hookup with Lloyd, "My pussy can't handle more than four toes anymore"), or that the entire mystery hinges on a particularly slippery brand of body cream, which is something straight out of the Larry David school of comedy. But Garlin's script is all over the place, and it just flatlines once the story kicks into gear, especially since Garlin ensures from the first scene that there's no mystery in this "Netflix Mystery Movie."
HANDSOME can't decide if it wants to be a straight procedural (for a movie purporting to be a comedy, Heather's murder seems like it belongs in SE7EN); a spoof of hard-boiled detective movies; an introspective, I WANT SOMEONE TO EAT CHEESE WITH character study with Handsome a schlubby guy who just wants to settle down and have a family; a ripoff of INHERENT VICE with its ridiculous character names and the recurring image of a woman dancing with hula hoops serving as a Sortilege of sorts who may or may not be real; and a lot of quippy smartassery in a Hollywood setting that's the unmistakable KISS KISS BANG BANG and THE NICE GUYS territory of Shane Black. Garlin even borrows the "self-loathing Jew" line from CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM which, in all fairness since he's a creative partner on the show as well, might've been his in the first place. With its supporting cast and cameos by comedian Eddie Pepitone, Leah Remini as Handsome's sultry, accordian-playing neighbor, HOMICIDE HUNTER host Joe Kenda, and Kaley Cuoco as herself, HANDSOME has plenty of Garlin pals onboard but it's no INHERENT VICE, KISS KISS BANG BANG or THE NICE GUYS, and its jarring tonal shifts constantly stall any momentum it comes close to generating, making it feel like an interminable slog even at just 80 minutes. Garlin can be funny as hell in the right situation, and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM wouldn't be the same without him. But movies don't seem to play to his strengths, and aside from some occasional jokes that land in the opening third, the best that can be said for HANDSOME: A NETFLIX MYSTERY MOVIE is that it's at least a marginal improvement over DEALIN' WITH IDIOTS, an assessment that may very well set a new standard for "damning with faint praise."
One of the most acclaimed films at Sundance in 2013, IN A WORLD... is exactly the kind of movie that plays better at film festivals than in commercial release. It's pleasant, occasionally amusing, and it's made with the best intentions. There's nothing egregiously wrong with it, but it doesn't really do anything with its ideas and is rather slight and forgettable by the end. CHILDREN HOSPITAL's Lake Bell, a proven comic and dramatic performer who rarely gets the attention she deserves, writes, directs, and stars in this labor of love as Carol, a Los Angeles-based vocal coach who specializes in helping actors nail accents (she's introduced getting a voice mail from a sound mixer who needs her to work with Eva Longoria on a period film, as her Cockney accent "sounds like a retarded pirate"). She's successful in her field, but lives in the shadow of her legendary father Sam (Fred Melamud), a famed movie trailer voice who had a mentor in the late, great Don LaFontaine (Bell opens the film with a nice tribute to that great "In a world..." voice). She lives with Sam, a widower who promptly kicks her out so his one-year-younger-than-Carol girlfriend Jamie (Alexandra Holden) can move in. While working with Longoria in the studio where the actress has to re-loop her entire performance, Carol narrates a trailer as a goof, and she nails it so well that she finds herself in the running to voice the trailer for the Cameron Diaz blockbuster "AMAZON GAMES quadrilogy," which puts her in conflict with her dad and Gustav (Ken Marino), the other main voice in the trailer business.
Movie buffs will appreciate the occasional glimpses at the inner workings of the voiceover industry, but too much of IN A WORLD... is devoted to standard-issue rom-com stuff, with Carol falling for sound mixer Louis (Demetri Martin) and trying to patch things up between her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Moe (Rob Corddry) when concierge Dani fools around with AMAZON GAMES director and hotel guest Terence Pouncer (Jason O'Mara), plus some easy jabs at THE HUNGER GAMES and L.A. women with "sexy baby voices" who talk like every sentence ends with a question mark? Bell and Watkins have a nice sibling chemistry, Holden's Jamie is unpredictably handled in the way she legitimately loves Sam and is not just drawn by his fame, and Melamud has a voice that was made for trailers (Marino, however, does not), but the whole "female empowerment" message that Bell is going for is too heavy-handed by the end, and she can't resist the indie hipster crutch of using '70s and '80s hits ironically (Dani and Moe reconcile to the tune of Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line," and Carol and Louis' night out is a montage set to Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," for some reason). In the end, there's a few chuckles for film dorks, but that's ultimately the biggest problem. Bell got all of her cult comedy friends together (there's also supporting turns by Nick Offerman, Stephanie Allynne, Tig Notaro, and Jeff Garlin, plus Geena Davis as a ballbusting movie exec), and it grossed $3 million on 144 screens against a $1 million budget, but its appeal is too narrow. It feels like the kind of movie Tom Dicillo made in the '90s that nobody outside the industry gave a shit about. Bell is a charming and immensely likable actress, but IN A WORLD... too often comes off like little more than a rejected IFC pilot. (R, 93 mins)
SUNLIGHT JR. (US/UK - 2013)
Here's another example of a well-intentioned film that just has no chance once it's away from the secure and loving embrace of the film festival circuit. It was a major title at last year's Tribeca fest, and it's the kind of offering that the indie and the festival scene just eats up: gritty subject matter, socially and culturally relevant themes, name actors working for scale or less and getting their hands dirty on a pack-your-own-lunch labor of love that shows how serious they are about their craft...and it was ultimately given a zero-publicity VOD dumping while only playing on a few screens nationally. Written and directed by SHERRYBABY's Laurie Collyer, SUNLIGHT JR. stars Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon as Melissa and Richie, a severely down-on-their-luck Florida couple who've been beaten to shit by life: he's a hard-drinking paraplegic living disability check to disability check, fixing VCRs and siphoning gas from cars, and she's supporting them by scrambling for shifts at a rundown convenience store called Sunlight Jr., where she's routinely hassled by her stalker ex Justin (Norman Reedus), who demonstrated his love by routinely beating her and getting her hooked on prescription painkillers. They live in a fleabag motel but they're happy together, and that happiness intensifies when she discovers she's pregnant. But, since this is a depressing indie drama that could almost be called BLUE VALENTINE: THE LATER YEARS, that joy is short-lived as her asshole boss (Antoni Corone) threatens her job and Justin's behavior grows more menacing now that his restraining order's been lifted.
Watts, Dillon, and the film are moving along just fine until the pregnancy, when Collyer just starts piling on one misfortune after another in a way that crosses the line from realism into deck-stacking misery porn. The problems with her boss exist only to make the story take a more miserable turn. It's a corporate chain--as evidenced by a company HR rep visiting to administer drug tests--so there's no reason Melissa can't tell someone higher-up that she's being sexually harassed by her boss ("Are those pants wet because of me?" he asks Melissa after she walks to work in the rain), and his other managerial practices are flat-out abusive and intimidating. And given Justin's behavior, there's no valid reason for the restraining order to be lifted other than Collyer needs him to show up at Sunlight Jr to cause dramatic conflict and offer Melissa some painkillers. And later, when they're kicked out of the motel and have to move in with her alcoholic mother (Tess Harper) and her brood of unruly foster kids that she lets run wild so she can keep the foster care checks coming in, there's not only Richie's ramped-up boozing and the foster kids being bitten by bedbugs, but also the mom's asshole landlord--who else?--JUSTIN! To Collyer's credit, she doesn't turn Melissa and Richie into martyrs or succumb to white trash caricaturing, and she does a commendable job of capturing the atmosphere of crippling economic depression, shooting in locations that look like a desolate wasteland of homeless people, closed-down strip malls with weeds growing through the concrete, pawn shops, flea markets, and dive bars. Watts and Dillon are excellent until the plot developments start threatening to turn the characters into cardboard cutouts; Watts perseveres but Dillon can't do much with the clichéd arc undergone by Richie. SUNLIGHT JR sometimes falls victim to ham-fisted melodrama, but there's a lot of positives to be found with the performances, a very Ry Cooder-ish score by J. Mascis, and Collyer's compassionate depiction of a struggling underclass. (Unrated, 95 mins)
The Irish import GRABBERS is a throwback to the kind of fun, crowd-pleasing monster movies that you don't see much of these days. The pace lags at times and it doesn't balance the humor and horror as deftly as say, an Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg film, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable B-movie that's made for fans, by fans. After a strange object crashes into the sea off the coast of the small and distant Erin Island, three fisherman are killed by tentacled creatures who attack from the water. Meanwhile, the local Garda chief is going on vacation for two weeks, leaving the island's only other cop, depressed alcoholic O'Shea (Richard Coyle, from the recent PUSHER remake) in charge, with temporary fill-in Lisa (Ruth Bradley) on loan from the mainland. As the tentacled creatures--and their hatching eggs--are working their way to the island, drunk local fisherman Paddy (Lalor Roddy) manages to capture one of them after it starts to attack him but stops as if falling suddenly ill. When the same captured creature--dubbed a "grabber" by Paddy--attacks a drunk-on-duty O'Shea and again becomes violently ill, scientist Dr. Smith (Russell Tovey) deduces that the Grabbers are allergic to alcohol. With the waters too infested for help to come from the mainland, and with the Grabbers rapidly making their way to Erin Island to chow down on the locals, O'Shea comes up with the only way at his disposal to immediately take them on: have everyone on the island meet at the local pub and get completely shitfaced.
From the close proximity of the term "grabber" to "graboid," 1990's sleeper hit TREMORS is probably the foremost influence on GRABBERS. But there's also a lot of James Gunn's underappreciated 2006 gem SLITHER in there as well, plus JAWS and even some GREMLINS once the baby Grabbers hatch. There's also a hilarious ALIENS riff as a forklift-driving Lisa confronts a giant Grabber ("Get away from him, ya cunt!"). As if those weren't enough, the score by Christian Henson is equal parts John Williams, Danny Elfman, and Akira Ikufube. Coyle is a likable hero and he and Bradley make a good team--of course his O'Shea will grow up and her uptight Lisa will loosen up as the movie goes on. The CGI work on the Grabbers is surprisingly well-done and the overall feeling of GRABBERS is one of an old-school monster movie--the kind that would've been really popular in the late '80s. The gore is very minimal, and if you take away the F-and-C-bombs, it could easily be a PG-13 hit in 1988 from the Spielberg camp or from a director like a Joe Dante, a Robert Zemeckis, or maybe a Fred Dekker. Director Jon Wright and screenwriter Kevin Lehane demonstrate a strong affinity for this type of film and is shows from start to finish, even when the midsection drags a little more than it should. Suspenseful and with engaging characters and actors, and an occasionally sick sense of humor (I love the bit where a smarter-than-you'd-think Grabber uses a human as a puppet-on-a-string bait to lure a hapless islander out of his house), GRABBERS hits a lot more than it misses and fans will find it well worth their time. (Unrated, 94 mins)
DEALIN' WITH IDIOTS (US - 2013)
CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM's Jeff Garlin co-wrote, directed, and stars in this self-indulgent home movie that serves no real purpose other than allowing him to hang out with some of his comedy friends. There's a sharp satire to be made about aggressively over-involved parents sucking all the fun out of Little League baseball, but the dull and pointless DEALIN' WITH IDIOTS isn't it. Essentially playing himself, Garlin is Max, a comedian who can't believe the boorish behavior of some of the parents at his son's baseball games. So he decides to interview them individually to see if he can mine some material for a possible movie project. The rest of the film--other than a climactic meltdown that's easily the most painfully unfunny moment of Garlin's career--is Max meeting up with the parents and the coaches as Garlin steps aside and lets the various actors riff and improv. Imagine a Christopher Guest mockumentary where nearly every joke landed with a thud and you'll get some idea of what an endless slog this feels like. Some of the cast members provide fleeting moments of mild amusement: Richard Kind makes the line "Take a ride in my brand new Camry" sound funny, Fred Willard--whose presence just reminds you that Guest could've worked wonders with such a premise--really sells the term "charity romp," and Jami Gertz, wearing a shirt that reads "Team Mom," viciously nails the high-strung, helicopter-parenting, control-freak supermom who's just way too into it. But you know everyone's having an off-day when guys like J.B. Smoove and Bob Odenkirk just babble on without getting any laughs. Also with Gina Gershon and Kerri Kenney-Silver as lesbian parents, Nia Vardalos as Max's wife, Vardalos' husband Ian Gomez as the Little League commissioner Gordon, which gives Garlin a chance to make Batman references so forced and awkward that you can practically hear crickets chirping, and Timothy Olyphant as the ghost of Max's dad. Don't ask. Better yet, don't watch. Garlin's a funny guy and a great straight man, and his MARTY-inspired 2007 film I WANT SOMEONE TO EAT CHEESE WITH is a funny and heartfelt little sleeper, but DEALIN' WITH IDIOTS is just a DOA dud from the start. (Unrated, 87 mins)
