Somebody Up There Likes Me

Everybody is an idiot except me. This is a good movie.

Bob Byington—of the mumblecore classic, Harmony and Me—takes increased production value for what it's worth. He leans into the stylized aspects of the genre by blending animation, special effects, and formal experimentation. E.g. I nearly lost it when "- Raisins?" appeared as a subtitle on the screen to punctuate a misunderstanding. Misunderstandings commonly occur in the movie but are played with differently each time, usually revealing some character foible. Plus: Sean Price Williams +1

Wow, okay i take it all back, somehow either Byington became a way better filmmaker or i really need to rewatch Harmony and Me ASAP, because this is pretty great. It has some lowbrow, silly humor and overly affected cutesy aspects, but it's really funny and the dialogue is great. It helps that Byington seems to have taken more than just his credit font and Kevin Corrigan from Hal Hartley movies, and that Keith Poulson is like a young Chris Eigeman. Also Kate Lyn Sheil > Greta Gerwig, seriously.

I got two feelings from this movie: 1) "S**t. This is such a bad movie." 2) "S**t. I really would love to bang Lyla and Clarissa!"

This film's actually got some pretty interesting things to say about detachment and narrative structure, and manages to be pretty funny now an then in a deadpan way. Unfortunately the material is stretched far too thin for the movie to be recommendable; the characters being totally unengaging (with the possible exception of Nick Offerman who's trying pretty hard) doesn't help. This could have been a lovely 10-minute film, but at 75 minutes it's mostly a drag.

Bollocks *Preview*: #13#, exp-3*, story, Jess.W/7-3, (N.Offerman/4-2, K.Corrigan/4-2), R1.

A mostly random, sometimes funny, evaluation of how little lives change over an extended period of time. The story is told in 5 year segments, and the characters have filterless stream of conscience dialogue. This can be funny, but ultimately it feels like several incomplete ideas packaged together in a film. Offerman is pretty funny.