Bayview Entertainment has come up with a gem-of-a-movie for release on DVD and Blu-ray on May 31. It comes from writer, director and producer Eric Swinderman and it is titled Enormity of Life … if you love off-beat comedies, well-written films and good acting, then certainly mark this on your must-see list for 2022.
Comedy is the hardest to make. Timing is everything, one misstep and the film is toast. A dark comedy is even harder … you can go right over a cinematic cliff if you lose your audience … if they don’t settle in and go for the ride. The last thing a filmmaker wants is a theatre full of bewildered viewers who don’t get it.
Hal Ashby got it right twice with Being There and Harold and Maude, that’s saying something, Alexander Payne nailed it with Sideways … sure, Zach Braff wrote, directed and starred in Garden State. For everyone of these “quirky” comedies, you can easily forget a dozen more that went off the rails.
Enormity of Life is an arthouse film. That’s a good thing. It has Woody Allen written all over it, but it didn’t go that route, the stupid pandemic pushed it into streaming platforms; wasted. You need an audience to really get a feel for how good this is … that ship has sailed, nothing can be done about that, but on May 31 at least you can own this beauty on either Blu-ray or DVD.
Breckin Meyer (Road Trip, Clueless, Blue State) plays Casey, who suffers from a lifelong bout of melancholy — there is no joy in Casey’s Mudville, he suffers from an affliction known as Anhedonia. He’s ready to end it. He’s seen his future in the form of his mother, who is, well, nuts … she tried to kill him when he was just a boy. That’s the sort of thing that sticks with you.
In any case, he gets news from an attorney (a wonderful off-color bit by Allan O’Reilly — Crimes and Mister Meanors, The Assassin's Code) that he has inherited nearly a quarter-of-a-million dollars. His first impulse is to simply burn the check and get back to a second try at suicide, but a conversation with his neighbor, Jess (Emily Kinney — best known as Beth Greene on The Walking Dead television series), sets him on a different trajectory.
She’s a single mom, raising a dysfunctional daughter by the name of Jules (Giselle Eisenberg … as Sophia on the Life in Pieces sitcom), who has seen too many cable news broadcasts and has become convinced that she will someday, perhaps sooner than later, be a victim of a mass school shooting. Like Casey, she has “seen” the future and she is terrified of it.
Ironically, Jules is the type of kid that the Covid pandemic has created … sleeping at night with a mask on, walking down the street, alone, in 90-degree weather with a mask on, with the certain knowledge that the Corona bug will in time get them … they’ve learned this from cable news. They live in fear.
In many ways, Swinderman’s Enormity of Life is more about Jules irrational struggles and trying to cope, then it is about Casey’s downer-view of life. He’s found, perhaps, a future with Jess and with that a way to put his checkered family past behind him.
A single mom, a young girl suffering from PTSD and a suicidal Anhedonian are suddenly on something of a road trip. We, as the audience, are along for the ride in this wonderfully written and acted comedy. It is fun, and sad, and we are invested. Perhaps, three lost souls will be the mixings for an elixir of life … May 31, on DVD or Blu-ray from Bayview Entertainment to discover the answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment