Attention Shoppers

If you would like a laugh-outloud knee-slapper, you should definitely find another movie. This is comedy in a more traditionally theatrical sense, with dry, quietly subtle observations bordering on satire and witty insights into the near-tragedy of the human condition.

It is also one of those small, personal, tightly focused setpieces that we hardly see any more. The plot is simple and impossible to expand upon, but does all that it needs to accomplish - giving the central character a moment's pause in his life so that he can reflect on what he really has to be thankful for and redirect his ambitions towards that rather than the Hollywood star turn he had been working toward the previous decade. And as with many such films, the back-story, about the man's possible estrangement from his wife, is the real story, since, as it turns out, his marriage is the best of what life has to offer him.

Speaking about star-turns, Nestor Carbonell's performance here is exquisite. And the other actors are at there best in support of it. And the work behind the camera is highly polished.

I'm disappointed that this film is so poorly rated here. Possibly audiences have lost the patience to sit through a film that insists we think along with it. Suffice it to say, it may not be to every taste. But on its own terms it's an excellent film.