Monday, November 26, 2007

Movie review: I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

By Alex Bentley

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

This film is a poignant and humorous look at a man in search of a soul mate. James is a frustrated and underappreciated Chicago actor who lives with his mother and has only really wanted three things in life: someone to love him, a great part, and to lose weight. Unfortunately, he is 0 for 3. His girlfriend dumps him, he loses the title role in a remake of Paddy Chayefsky's Marty to teen idol Aaron Carter, and he sneaks out of an Overeaters Anonymous meeting only to wind up at an ice cream parlor. There, he meets Beth, who quickly wins his heart but will this cause James more problems than it solves? Or has he finally found someone to eat cheese with?

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

Jeff Garlin is a comedian who’s arguably best known for his role as Larry David’s manager on Curb Your Enthusiasm, a show that incorporates mostly-improvised dialogue. There’s no official word on whether the same is true of I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, Garlin’s feature writing and directorial debut, but if the film went entirely according to script, Garlin might want to go back to improvisation.

Only in a movie could a guy this fat end up with a girl this hot.

Garlin plays James Aaron, a good-hearted schlub who has settled into a routine of living at home with his mother and working as a low-level actor at Chicago’s Second City. Like almost everybody else out there, he’s looking for something more to life, but he’s not sure how to find it. The film follows James through his day-to-day life, running into old acquaintances, randomly meeting a cute girl (Sarah Silverman) who’s inexplicably attracted to him, and just generally leading a no-account life.

All of this might have some merit if there were anything truly interesting about James’ quest. Unfortunately, almost none of it is. Garlin has obviously used his comedic connections to bring in top talent like Silverman, Dan Castellaneta, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Kind and Amy Sedaris (among others) … and yet, he hardly gives them anything with which to be funny. It might be that the film wasn’t meant to be all that funny, just sweet and rambling, but it’s an awfully big tease to fill a movie with known comedians and then hold back on the comedy. Films without specific plot goals can be interesting, but only in the most capable of hands, and Garlin just doesn’t seem to have that level of talent yet.

Another one of James' random pointless stops in his day.

A common thread throughout the film is James’ disdain/fascination with a remake of the Oscar-winning film Marty. I suppose it’s meant to be self-referential that I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With is essentially an update of the Marty story (lonely man looking for love while living at home with his mother), but it actually comes off as sort of lazy and uninspired. Why shouldn’t the audience watching an actual Marty remake be as upset as James is at a fake Marty remake?

One can’t really say that any of the actors in the film are good or bad – they’re just kind of along for the ride. Silverman is a pleasant surprise, toning down her normal profane self and highlighting a rarely-seen sexy side (to good effect, I must say). Garlin is fine in a role that couldn’t have been played by anybody else but him, but that might be the problem right there. In fact, the best two actors in the film are the ones who are in it the least – Gina Gershon and Nick Carter pop up near the end in a short scene from the new (fake) Marty using the original dialogue, and it’s the funniest thing in the whole movie. Too bad Garlin couldn’t come up with anything to match that.

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With is currently playing a one-week-only engagement at the Inwood, so catch it while you can...or if you dare.

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• Arts > Movies / Film > Independent Films