Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Happythankyoumoreplease - DVD Review


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Starring Josh Radnour, Malin Akerman, Kata Mara, Zoe Kazan, Tony Hale, Richard Jenkins, Michael Algieri, Pablo Schreiber and Peter Scanavino. Directed by Josh Radnour.

See a group of New Yorkers in arrested development walk around with indie guitar licks on the soundtrack. Sounds like a deadly Sundance cliche. In many ways, this movie is, but there's some surprising enjoyable elements to it. Elements.

Story #1 revolves around an aspiring writer (How I Met Your Mother's Josh Radnour, in indie-Zack Braff mode) who finds a kid on the subway who apparently has no family and no place to go. So he brings him home with him, not really sure what to do. Why doesn't he just turn him over to the police so they can find his family/orphanage/wheever he belongs? I wasn't clear on that. Meanwhile he's falling for a bartender.

Story #2 follows a girl (Zoe Kazan) unlucky with guys who gets pregnant, and she isn't sure if her boyfriend will stay with her.

Story #3 is about a woman (Malin Akerman) with an auto-immune disorder who nevertheless is trying to tackle life with a good attitude. She gets used by one ex-flame while avoiding the nerdy guy (Tony Hale) at work. However there's more to the nerdy guy than she thinks.

The third story was the one that worked for me. The second one I never cared about, and the first one took me about an hour in before I cared what happened next. So on the positive side, it features the best acting yet from Malin Akerman (Watchmen), who's hairless the whole movie, and it gives Tony Hale (Arrested Development, Chuck) more to do than we've ever seen before. But it's buried in chatty relationship ensemble dramedy trappings we've seen many times before.

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