Running on Empty

In weakly meandering LA indie dark comedy "Running On Empty" science has developed a way to accurately predict everyone's natural death date. On learning he has less than a year to live meek Keir Gilchrist's life takes a jolt. Fiancee Francesca Eastwood (Clint's daughter) dumps him, but he befriends Lucy Hale. Pimp Rhys Coiro steals his car and repeatedly tries extorting cash out of him. Oh, and his weird job for mortician uncle Jim Gaffigan (good) carries on as normal. Daniel André may have hoped his debut as writer / director would strike a bleakly genius tone similar to that of the likes of "Wristcutters: A Love Story"... but it doesn't. Disappointing.

No pun intended - damn, I don't know where that came from. But it is so fitting for the movie ... and you may even think it is way better than the movie or what it deserves. But I like the movie and its weird idea with people knowing when their about to ... "move on" ... now does it make sense internally speaking? Mostly no - you have to suspend your disbelief ... a lot.

So if you are able to do that ... go on and enjoy the show. I think it is obvious that the actors had a lot of fun - again with no sense and nothing really connecting ... take the woman at the bar ... she had to know ... that it didn't make sense to go out with our main character ... for multiple reasons.

You could say she planned or staged it ... but even that is paper thin and does not work. But again, just don't mind the stuff that is not working and concentrate on the fun you can have ... running on funny ...

This movie is kind of confusing in its tone and presentation. It truly seems like the work of amateurs; perhaps a film school project.

The cast seems to consist of first-time actors, led by a completely charmless main character, and I would've dismissed it completely after the first disheartening 10 minutes, if not for the puzzling presence of names like Monica Potter, Lucy Hale, Jim Gaffigan and Rhys Coiro.

Did they owe money or favors to the producers?

The script is a mess, the dialogue clumsy, scenes are long and ambling and poorly edited. The entire pacing of both individual scenes and the movie as a whole seems off. It tries to come off as a sort of quirky unpredictable dark comedy, but it's neither funny nor original, and completely devoid of any charm.

According to IMDb this is the director's feature debut, and honestly: that doesn't surprise me one bit.