My Name Is Buttons

Austin filmmakers John Merriman, Courtney Davis, and David Layton have created a little gem in Buttons, a very funny, very smart swipe at the particularly annoying Hollywood feel-good, rebel-against-the-stuffy-institution film best exemplified by Patch Adams. It is a real shame that such a good little film has only been seen in a dozen or so film festival appearances, because it is so right on.

It gets maximum laughs by simply and honestly recreating the simplistic plot-devices of these groaners and the totally stilted and goofy dialog regularly plaguing them. On top of that is a Flowers For Algernon in reverse plot line in which a unhappy and disgruntled intellectual (Merriman as Hunter Reeves) is fed a drug that makes him simple and, like Forrest Gump, happy (Merriman as Reeves altered ego, Buttons).

Lowell Bartholomee delivers a brilliant performance as the Robin Williams-esque Dr. Lamb Williams, a clinical psychologist for a pharmacological testing lab that turns paid volunteers into lab rats. Merriman is equally brilliant as the hapless Reeves/Buttons, and Courtney Davis and T'Chaka Sikelianos are no less right on as Hunter's friends and fellow lab rats.

But the real star here is writing that knows when to go for the broad joke and when to settle for subtle irony. Combined with perfectly modulated performances, it creates a film that only gets better with repeated viewing as you discover a joke or clever observation that you might have overlooked before.

Here's hoping this film has a long life on DVD.