I REALLY wanted to love this movie. Here's why I didn't...

3 reasons...

(1) Forced drama. Just as characters in horror movies act stupider than seems plausible, characters in dramas sometimes act more like jerks than it seems like anyone in real life would. Case in point - Jack's treatment of Sam. This would take a couples counselor 5 minutes. Sounds like an improv setup - couple with really obvious problems. ALL she wants, OBVIOUSLY, is for Jack to support her in trying to continue with the Commune in some form. None of them make a living at it already; she already has a day job. Similarly, it would have been a cinch for him to show up and do most of their shows even after he got his big gig. These are supposedly his closest friends and family for years, and somehow he isn't able to help them in the obvious way he could, nor is able to have a simple, frank conversation about how of course he can't get them writing jobs.

Or consider the dramatic scene that fell the flattest for me - when Miles says to Tami, "The problem with you is that you've had everything handed to you." Um...right; that's what we, and he, knew about Tami after 10 seconds; that her parents are rich is her basic character description. We're supposed to believe that after being the closest of friends for many years, that all he has to say to her is to throw in her face that her parents have money?

I haven't done improv per se (other than as a theatre warm up), but I've certainly been around a lot of indie comedy, film, and theatre folks, and in the various overlapping circles of friends that develop, I've never seen people treat each other in as petty a fashion. They didn't act like friends who actually loved each other; they treated each other like tools in a dramedy script that needed to grind along into the next beat.

(2) All improv, all the time. I get it. Sheesh. Improv is life and life is improv. Sam creates a bit while having sex. Sam does voices and characters even when Jack is trying to have a serious conversation. They can barely turn it off when Chris's dad is sick. It would be like a musical where someone sung at least a few notes in every single scene, and most scenes consisted entirely of song. The improv geeks that I know are very fun people to be around, but this is incidental, not defining, of their characters. This came across as a film, rather like a failing improv troupe itself, that was desperate to make it's characters super improvtastic in every single scene. Strangely, I found myself thinking: I would hate to be around these people, if such people could truly exist. They don't appear to be capable of a quiet, sincere moment, devoid of irony or performance.

(3) Overall, characters as thin as skimmed milk. Not as thin as water. There was something there, spread evenly over all of them. Each one had a rather simple backstory - the failed big-timer who actually wanted a career out of this, the talent everyone is a little jealous of, the rich girl, the hot sad one (sorry, but that was her role), the geeky girl, the older unattractive guy who is a bit of an outsider. None of their characters developed much; you could draw a line from every scene, almost every line, back to these character descriptions. There was some insightful moments in their character arcs, but the film made a serious mistake in focusing on Jack and Sam. They are the least interesting of the characters. Other than being hot and sad, who is Sam? Who is Jack? We see them performing on stage, performing in the shower, performing for each other. Compare these characters to the characters in the best seasons of Louis; there is more quirky unique humanity in one scene than this entire film. Think I'm being a bit harsh? Consider this - in your head, switch the dialogue around. At least 3/4 of the lines in this film could have been said by a different character, and the scene would have worked just as well or poorly, because so many of the lines are simply bits. Sketches. We are supposed to find it funny because they're trying to hard to be funny.

I laughed a few times, felt touched a few times. A few hours later I can't recall much of anything about the characters that really stuck with me, and as a 38 year old struggling writer who has bombed and killed a little at standup and comedy writing and is fascinated by communal living and circles of friends centered around art...I felt like I was the perfect audience to love this film. Perhaps it's the expectations game in part; with the RAVE reviews, I went in expecting some sort of nuclear bomb of comedy and humanity. A real film, not a 2 hour long improv show.