Written and directed by Edward Weber and produced and starring Joey Pantoliano, Second Best is a curious movie that is painfully entertaining, embarrassingly funny and surprisingly touching in the end. Debuting at Sundance last night, Weber's story is about the anti-heroes, the average Joes that have cashed in their dreams for mediocre careers and dysfunctional families. Accustomed to failure and disappointment, they now only play-act at success, and will grasp at the fringes of worldliness.
Weber effectively makes the case that there is nobility in the lives of the below-average and that the friendships that bind these people (for they have nothing else but friends) is of greater value and meaning than the worldly success they aspire to.
Pantoliano hasn't branched far from the tree of his typical roles. He plays Eliot, a wise-cracking, cynical, self-proclaimed loser with a broken marriage and a job selling menswear. He nevertheless is the catalyst for his gang of pals, one of which is a Hollywood mogul currently on top of the world. What's the allure? Eliot is a funny, interesting, original thinker who, in the end, we know to have a heart of gold. And even more important, they've been friends for life.
I wanted to like the movie, because it feels like an original theme and I cared about the characters. A little more plot would have been nice, though. I also began to weary of the Freudian obsession with sex in a group of 40-year-old men. And I never bought into the extraordinary insensitivity Eliot displays to his friends. And finally, the only remotely likeable female character is Eliot's mother, Barbara Barrie, who gives a nice comedic performance.
I am eager to see what Weber comes up with next.
