I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

James Aaron (Jeff Garlin) is a struggling actor in Chicago. He's 39 and lives at home with his mom. He performs at Second City. His girlfriend dumps him. Her brother is his agent and he dumps him, too. His life is a struggle all around.

Jeff Garlin has recruited a bunch of his famous friends to be in his indie. There are little nuggets of humor which are accentuated with funny co-stars like Sarah Silverman and Bonnie Hunt. This is basically Marty (1955) and even makes it one of the central premise. The only thing is that he's not being Marty. He has so many female companions beginning with a starter girlfriend. It's going against his own premise. I do like the guy a lot as a character and as a performer. He does need some help with the story construction.

Garlin did a great job. Nice concept well executed, and tightly produced. Came across as a very sincere story. As a fan of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", where Jeff was pretty much the straight guy role, I was delighted with how much depth he brought to this role in a simple yet effective portrayal.

Much of the humor was understated and subtle and drew on poignancy, which I really liked, rather than being slapstick or over-explained. And there were some nice little surprises and twists. The convenience store vignettes were a delight.

When I say it is a wonderful "small" film, I don't mean budget or quality. It is simple, intimate and hand-crafted. It tells a highly believable everyday story. Relax and go see it. Let it wash over you, and you will feel good for having done so.

Garlin outdoes himself as writer-director-actor in his indie production about a big guy (Garlin) wandering around Chicago with an eye for every woman he sees. The laughs keep coming almost every minute. It's a somewhat dramatic and serious story about a man looking for love, but done with great comedic writing and acting. The supporting roles are also very well done and very funny and really make the movie rich.

Rose Abdoo is hysterical in her receptionist role taking you right into the mood of the rest of the film. Sara Silverman is awesome with some of the great bits she does with Jeff. Bonnie Hunt is classically great in her role. I only wish there was more of her in the film, as I think most will agree. It's certainly refreshing to see her in a tight leather outfit.

David Pasquesi was the aloof detached sidekick, and voice of reason. Mina Kolb plays Jeff's mother who he lives with. There were numerous other cameos, all of them done very well.

At the premier Jeff mentioned his inability to do more with Bonnie due to production issues. Still, it's good to leave you wanting more. I think it's that indie thing of keeping some things ambiguous to let the audience do some thinking for themselves to fill in the blanks. The wordy title should clue you in to this.

Jeff said some of the basic characters were based on his past relationships. This explains why they work so well. Real life people are always unusually colorful and makes great characters. He departs quite a bit from what you might expect, having seen Curb Your Enthusiasm and some of his other work. It's one of those break out things where an actor takes some risks to do something they maybe always wanted to do but couldn't.

I think it's noteworthy that Garlin's improv Second City background, and Hunt's for that matter, set the style here of acting being the focus of the story and the directing. It's perhaps a new innovative hybrid of improv meets indie film-making.

This movie is like an 80 minutes long episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", except there is no Larry David, and Jeff Garlin is now the main character. We can say that Jeff would be Larry, and David Pasquesi would be Jeff. This movie is so much like that show, that many of the actors have been on the show, and in some scenes even the soundtrack sounds exactly the same. I don't mean that this is all bad, but Jeff, some originality please.

The movie it self has quite funny parts, but most of the time you are just looking at the screen with no emotions, you are not bored, but you are amused, you don't want to laugh, and you don't want to cry, you are just watching and waiting for something to make you either give up on it, or really want to keep watching it. In fact, that is what I feel when I watch the TV Show also, one more common thing between them.

I was also expecting something more from this movie since most of the actors are well known (in the comedy area). It was a bit of a disappointment in that chapter.

Eitherway, if you like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" you should definitely watch this movie, if you hate it don't watch it. If you are like me and liked some and hated some, watch it because it's only 80 minutes long.

I enjoyed this film for the most part, but there are a lot of problematic things I'd like to point out.

First, let's say what's good about the film. It's clever, and the characters are well rounded and quite honestly, the main character is entertaining in his own awkward way. The love interest aspect of the movie actually ends up taking a backseat to this man's somewhat depressing life, but the film never stops being a little charming. The problem, though, is that it's been advertised as a romantic comedy. It's not.

Mostly it's a sitcom in the form of a full length feature. Anyone familiar with the formula of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm will recognize the setup of many jokes and situations throughout the film (Jeff Garlin is a producer and character on CYE, so this shouldn't come as a surprise that they're very similar. Even down to the soundtrack.) My girlfriend and I picked this one up after seeing the trailer and thought it would be a funny romantic comedy. But, as I've already said, the relationship aspect to the film is only a side note. Sara Silverman's character gets maybe a total of fifteen minutes on screen, and is not anything like the trailer portrays. To make a long story short, my girlfriend fell asleep a long while before the movie ended, and I, while I thought it had it's funny moments and made a decent "indie" film about the life of a depressed overweight man, was a bit disappointed that there wasn't a stronger romantic aspect to it since that's what I was expecting. The movie in its entirety seems like Jeff Garlin's attempt to emulate the style and comedy of Curb Your Enthusiasm with a slightly more true-to-life tone. I could see this main character becoming a character in a sitcom, and part of me wonders if this wasn't some type of offshoot of a project that was originally intended to be a sitcom, or something that Garlin hoped would be well received enough for someone to give him his own show.

Six out of ten because of its charm and several funny moments, but seriously disappointed with the misleading advertising.