Review: "Don't Think Twice"

When I was around 20 and 21 years old, I went almost every weekend to an improv comedy show in my native Orlando. I was taking a break from college to make money so I could go back, so the $7 admission price was a good fit with my entertainment budget. Sometimes the group hit the top floor, laughs all around, and occasionally the performance struggled to get off the ground. But I always enjoyed the dynamics of the form -- a blend of stand-up comedy, acting technique and traditional theater.

It was pretty obvious to anyone who went to the show regularly that there were a couple of standouts. And nobody was surprised when they went on to productive showbiz careers. Wayne Brady is a well-known stage and television actor/singer who briefly had his own talk show; Joel McCrary had a funny bit on "Seinfeld" and went on to appear in "American Beauty" and the "Princess Diaries" movies, among others.

I occasionally pondered what it must have been like for the members of their old troupe to see them onscreen. I'm sure like any human being, they felt a combination of joy and envy. 'Why them and not me?' they think. Or they wonder how a group effort that they all had a hand in creating ended up capturing attention for one of their number, but not the others.

"Don't Think Twice" is essentially the cinematic embodiment of that predicament. It's written and directed by Mike Birbiglia, who's known mostly for his stand-up routine and comedy specials; a few years ago he spun off his one-man show "Sleepwalk with Me" into a narrative film. His shows blend laughter and sadness, with a great deal of insight about how people think and act in the real world when they don't think anyone's looking.

Birbiglia is a wonderful storyteller, so it makes sense that he approached a movie about an improv comedy group with the intention of giving all six of them equal screen time and treatment. I'm not sure if that was the best move. Because just as in any endeavor, some people are more interesting than others; some are going to make it big and some are not.

There's also an intrinsic melancholy to a tale about a tight-knit group that comes unraveled when one of them, Jack (Keegan-Michael Key), gets called up to "Weekend Live," a not-at-all obscured version of "Saturday Night Live." This causes a great deal of tension and accusations, especially from Miles (Birbiglia), the oldest guy and founder of their group, The Commune.

He essentially taught all the others how to do improv, and now they're a family with him as the goofy patriarch. Miles tried out for "Weekend Live" a dozen years earlier himself and didn't make the cut. He's young enough (36) to have a lot of pathways in life still open to him, but old enough to store up resentments and self-doubt.

Gillian Jacobs plays Sam, who is probably the best natural performer of the group and also Jack's girlfriend. She herself was called in to audition for the show at the same time, but wigged out and blew it off. Now they're stuck in a situation where he's gone all the time to work on this big high-profile TV show, and she's perfectly happy performing in The Commune, even if it means she has to work a crappy day job.

Chris Gethard has a poignant presence as Bill, the resident straight man and nebbishy nice guy. His old man is rich so he doesn't really worry about money, but there's the ever-present sense that his dad considers him a failure. Your 20s is all about giving it all for your dreams, he observes, while in your 30s you realize how much of that time and energy was wasted.

Kate Micucci is Allison, a bit of a wallflower who had a great start as a cartoonist that never panned out, so she segued into improv. Tami Sagher plays Lindsay, who also performs out of a sense of love rather than financial need, yet often seems like the most devoted member.

I immensely enjoyed spending time with these people, as they go through the episodic routine of getting ready to go out onstage and function as a team. This has carried over into their personal relationships, where they can't ever "turn it off," making jokes even while kissing (Jack and Sam) or dealing with a serious family medical crisis.

Their improv works as a circular arrangement, but people need to eventually break out of that loop and go somewhere else, or their lives suffer.

"Don't Think Twice" is a story about people reaching that point of departure in their lives, professionally and personally. It's one they probably would have come to soon enough, but Jack's sudden success acts as the tripwire that sets things in motion.

Like Birbiglia's other work, it's funny, a little depressing, and a lot smart.

 

Review: "Trainwreck"

The difference between writing for sketch comedy and doing a feature-length comedy script stretches wider than the Grand Canyon. Sketches rely on a quick set-up/punchline rhythm and absurd concepts, the zanier the better. Making a whole movie is exponentially tougher: you've got to weave the humor into a broader narrative, fashion engaging characters and come up with a satisfying arc for them to journey along.

"Trainwreck," written by and starring Amy Schumer, has a few good individual laughs but fails pretty miserably at the big-picture stuff.

It's essentially a two-hour-long iteration of the quasi-autobiographical version of herself Schumer presents in her standup routine and television show: hedonistic, hard-partying girl who loves to sleep around and mocks the idea of commitment. It's made for a lot of winning gags for TV, with Schumer's sly intelligence and feminist undertones percolating through the laughs.

There are three or four decent scenes like that in "Trainwreck," but the connective tissue in between is tough to wade through. The answer that Schumer and director Judd Apatow seem to have to come up with is to feature well-known actors or celebrities in punchy minor roles to spice up the dull patches. It works a little, but only a little.

You've probably heard that NBA superstar LeBron James plays himself in the movie, as a patient of wunderkind sports surgeon Aaron Conners (Bill Hader). Amy is Amy, a writer at a Neanderthal men's magazine called "Snap" who's been assigned to profile the doc, despite knowing exactly zilch about sports.

For instance, we're supposed to laugh at the notion that Amy has no idea who LeBron is when he pops into Aaron's office while she's meeting him. Except you'd have to have lived underground since birth not to recognize King James. In a common refrain in comedies these days, LeBron plays a goofy version of himself. Here, he's a cheapskate who insists on splitting the lunch bill and pals around with dweeby doctors.

Tilda Swinton plays Amy's boss, who has an abundance of confidence and a paucity of taste; Brie Larson is her younger, wiser sister; Colin Quinn plays their father, a philanderer who taught them "monogamy is unrealistic"; Ezra Miller is the impressionable young intern with a dark side; Mike Birbiglia is the kind-yet-dull brother-in-law; John Cena shows up -- and flashes a lot of skin -- as Amy's initial 'roided-up boyfriend; Amar'e Stoudemire portrays himself as a fictional patient of Aaron's; Dave Attell plays a mouthy panhandler; and Norman Lloyd, a bonafide 100 years of age, twinkles as a sparring partner of Amy's dad at the old folks' home.

One of the chief weaknesses of the movie is that I never bought the romance between Schumer and Hader for even a second. The idea is that Amy, having promptly slept with the guy she's supposed to be profiling, gets unwilling sucked into a relationship with him. But Hader isn't given much to do in the script that would make him endearing to such a wild-and-crazy gal... or anyone. He feels like a personality vacuum who got lucky.

At 125 minutes "Trainwreck" is about a half-hour too long, a near-universal feature of Apatow films that I had previously chalked up to his own undisciplined writing style and apparent unwillingness to hire an editor with any kind of clout. (Someone needs to tell him less is more, and with his style of motormouth comedy, less less is even more more.)

But even with Schumer handling script duties, this movie is still an overstuffed mess with jangled pieces that never really fit together. It's a one-night stand in which the evening grows old, fast.

Review: "The Fault in Our Stars"

"The Fault in Our Stars" is an exhausting movie. And I mean that in a good way.

It's been awhile since a film left me so emotionally wrung out. This tender-yet-sharp drama about two teenagers with terminal cancer falling in love, based on the best-selling YA book by John Green, promises to be the no-BS version of tragic young romance. And, mostly, it is.

"This is the truth. Sorry," introduces/apologizes our heroine, Hazel Grace (a remarkable Shailene Woodley).

Hazel, 17, had thyroid cancer which has spread to her lungs, forcing her to constantly breathe with the aid of an oxygen tank and counting her dwindling days on this mortal coil. Smart and realistic, she attends a church support group for young cancer patients, mostly to appease her loving but slightly smothering parents (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell).

There she meets Augustus Waters, an exuberant character exuberantly played by Ansel Elgort. A former cancer patient himself -- his right leg is prosthetic, rendering him a cyborg, he boasts -- he's mostly there to support his best friend, Isaac (Nat Wolff), who sacrificed one eye to the disease and is in danger of losing the other.

Augustus is a braggart and a charmer, the sort of fellow who coasts through life buoyed by his own outsized expectations for himself, telling the group he fully expects to live "an extraordinary life." But it's the retiring Hazel he can't keep his eyes off of, and soon the pair have struck up a deep friendship that dances right up to the line of love in full bloom.

The chemistry between Woodley and Elgort is terrific, with her the wary, inner-directed girl obsessed with damaging as few other lives before she dies, and he the world-conquering hero who knows not fear or hesitation.

Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who wrote the terrific "(500) Days of Summer," don't go in for a lot of storytelling tricks to endear the couple to the audience. Rather, they focus on building the connection between Hazel and Augustus, and through them we are drawn in.

Director Josh Boone mostly stays out of the way, eliciting strong performances from his cast while remaining as true to the book's tone as possible. (It's unread by me, but from what I've gathered it appears to be an extremely faithful adaptation.)

Soon after meeting, Hazel and Augusts each invite the other to read their favorite book. His is the novelization of a video game ("Counterinsurgence 2"), showing that Augustus is bright if not worldly. Hazel gives him "An Imperial Affliction," the tale of a girl who dies of cancer, written by a mysterious author named Peter Van Houten who has decamped to Amsterdam, eschewing his fans and promising never to write another word.

Later, Hazel and Augustus will get a chance to travel to the Netherlands to meet him, a trip filled with magic and discovery, except for the actual part where they meet their beloved author (Willem Dafoe).

(Here's a pro tip on the interpersonal skills of writers: Expect to be disappointed.)

The film is set in Indianapolis (Green was born and lives here), though it was shot in and around Pittsburgh. (Darn those miserly Indiana film tax incentives!) If you look hard one can spot a few cues in the background, most notably a picnic scene at the "Funky Bones" outdoor art exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 100 Acres. Augustus also rocks a Rik Smits jersey at one point.

"The Fault in Our Stars" is ultimately a life-affirming film, if one that favors sour realities over saccharine fantasies. "I don't want this particular life," Hazel admits. This movie is not afraid to show the bottom of being 17 and knowing you are soon to die, and that's pretty low. But the view from there is still uplifting.