Smith's Verdict

By Tanner Smith

Here’s one from my personal top 5: Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” which is hands-down my favorite romance film.

“Before Sunrise” is a film about two people in their early 20s–an American man named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and a French woman named Celine (Julie Delpy). They meet by chance on a train, start up a conversation, and form a nice connection–one that sadly has to end because Jesse has to get off in Vienna to catch a plane back home. But, in one of the best pickup scenes in movie history, Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him so they can spend the night talking some more:

“Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, and you’re married. Only your marriage doesn’t have that same energy that it used to have. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you’ve met in your life and what might have happened if you’d picked up with one of them, right? Well, I’m one of those guys. That’s me, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you’re missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you’re not missing out on anything. I’m just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and you made the right choice, and you’re really happy.”

And it works! She gets off the train with him, and they spend the whole night just walking and talking, about numerous topics like philosophy, religion, love…all while they’re falling a little bit in love, which makes it all the more tragic that this might be the first and last time they spend together.
And, well…there are two sequels, so it’s safe to say they do see each other again (although it’s way down the road).

A lot of “Before Sunrise” is driven by dialogue, and what dialogue it is! I mentioned in my post about The End of the Tour that if you have the right actors playing the right characters saying the right dialogue, it can be some of the most powerful films I could ever pay attention to. That’s exactly the case here (and with the other two movies, “Before Sunset” and Before Midnight). Director Richard Linklater and his co-writer Kim Krizan wrote the initial script, but Hawke and Delpy actually rewrote a lot of it themselves, though they weren’t credited. (They did share credit with Linklater, however, in co-writing the sequels together.) That should tell you how much Hawke and Delpy care about their own characters and what they’re saying.

But what is “Before Sunrise” truly about? What do we learn about Jesse and Celine (and about ourselves as an audience) as we listen to them talk throughout the night? Well, through what we learn about the two (such as Jesse getting over a harsh breakup shortly before this fateful night), we could take away the theme of Jesse’s self-discovery through someone else. And perhaps Celine feels the same being around him. And maybe the two feel a strong connection in each other–maybe not a sense of “love” necessarily but more a sense of “fulfillment,” which leaves open room for a relationship (which makes the other two films all the more intriguing).

My favorite scene: this is one of my top five favorite movies, so it’s hard to pick just one to talk about. I love the pickup scene, I love the scene in which they imagine what they’ll each their friends about each other, I LOVE the ambiguous ending in which they go their separate ways and keep thinking about each other! But I guess if I have to pick one…there’s a scene in which Jesse and Celine are in a listening booth at a record store, and they listen to a song while trying to avoid eye contact. The body language from both Hawke and Delpy in that scene is nothing short of brilliant.

I love this movie. It’s a beautiful piece of art and I never get tired of listening to these two people talk about whatever they want. And I also love “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight.”

I don’t have a lot of new material to add to “Before Midnight,” so you can reread my decade-end retrospective here (I called it my favorite film of the 2010s and I still stand by it). But “Before Sunset”…I’ll get to that one real soon.

By Tanner Smith

I wrote about Laggies yesterday; I might as well write about the late, great Lynn Shelton’s most infamous film today.

“Humpday” was indie filmmaker Lynn Shelton’s third film and it immediately got more people’s attentions in 2009. The reason for that? The concept alone was very funny–two long-time best buddies who are getting too old for the drunken one-ups-manship decide they’re going to partake in an amateur porno film in which they have sex together…but the problem is they’re not gay and the idea kinda makes them nervous. This came out the same year as mainstream comedies about male bonding like “The Hangover” and “I Love You, Man”–“Humpday” takes that male bonding and asks…what are the limits? (Or, in other words, what does “I love you, man” even mean, when you think about it?)

Maybe today it’d be no big deal to make a film like this and it’d probably be lost in the shuffle of films tackling something like sexual identity–but this is 2009 we’re talking about here, so it was good for this film to gain popularity when it did. (Plus “Humpday” is really freaking good.)

And it was good for writer-director Lynn Shelton, who made this film for less than 20 grand on a mostly improvised script, to gain recognition for it as well. Looking at the behind-the-scenes documentary on the film’s DVD, it’s very clear everyone on set loved Lynn Shelton, who clearly had a vision to project. If not for this film’s success, I’m sure she would’ve still made films, but “Humpday” was the seed that grew an even more distinguished film/TV career.

“Humpday” also stars two indie filmmaker-actors who got their start in the same mumblecore film world as Shelton: Mark Duplass (whose Duplass Brothers productions are other favorites of mine–“The Puffy Chair,” Baghead, Cyrus, Safety Not Guaranteed, “Jeff, Who Lives at Home”) and Joshua Leonard (indie filmmaker and also an in-demand character actor long since his role in “The Blair Witch Project”). They play Ben (Duplass), a happily married man with a loving wife named Anna (Alycia Delmore), and Andrew (Leonard), Ben’s shaggy free-spirit college buddy whom he hasn’t seen in 10 years before he shows up at Ben & Anna’s house out of the blue. Anna likes this guy; he seems harmless. And Ben suddenly feels the freedom he had as his college friend that’s sort of limited now that he’s in a committed relationship with Anna. Ben joins Andrew at a party (and unfortunately leaves Anna, who was cooking her famous porkchops for him, hanging at home for the night), where a bunch of young, wild, and free swingers (including Lynn Shelton herself) hang out, get high, and pretty much do whatever they want. (Mind you, these people aren’t very young themselves.)

And this is where Ben and Andrew get into a dare contest where they dare each other to make a gay pornographic film in which two straight guys (themselves) partake in anal sex. They’re going to submit their “art project” to the HUMP! film festival, a showcase for homemade erotica. It’s beyond daring, the idea of two (straight) guys having sex together, so they decide they’re gonna go for it…or are they?

Well, maybe they will. The next day, after sobering up, they think maybe this is a good idea–or, at least, they’re not willing to back down from this challenge. So they get a hotel room and…oh wait, first Ben has to tell his wife what he and his old friend will be doing. How she handles the situation once it’s revealed is one of the film’s highlights–Anna isn’t your one-dimensional conventional movie-wife type; she’s more reasonable (and complex) than that.

What helps this admittedly sitcom-like scenario feel so real is the improvised, unfurnished feel of it all. I’m usually not for entirely-improvised dramedies. (But why shouldn’t I be? They’re only annoying if the editors don’t cut out the overly-excessive improvisations.) But Duplass & Leonard’s chemistry is very natural, the interactions they share with other characters feel real, and it makes the final act, in which Ben & Andrew get to the room to make the “art project,” feel natural and real as a result. (The editing works as well–a scene thankfully doesn’t goes on too awkwardly long and it doesn’t feel unfocused.)

“Humpday” is also very perceptive. Shelton addresses, with “Humpday,” the contradictions of the modern everyman–for example, while they may not be homophobic in theory, that doesn’t mean they don’t feel uncomfortable about the idea of having sex with the same gender. When Ben ponders that, he thinks about what it means to have an identity and to have a motivation. It makes the resolution all the more interesting, and…well, I won’t go into it here, but a film critic looked back at the film not long ago and felt it “chickened out” at the end–I find that to be an over-simplification of what Shelton was going for here.

“Humpday” is a funny movie, but it’s also smart and insightful. “Laggies” may be my “favorite” of Lynn Shelton’s movies, but I have no problem with calling “Humpday” her best movie. And the Indie Spirits (yes, they come to the rescue yet again for the movies too important for Oscar to care about) seemed to agree–they gave Shelton and “Humpday” the coveted John Cassavetes Award (the award given to the best creative effort made for less than $500,000). Kudos!

Oh, wait a minute, there’s a French-language remake of this film? That sounds unusual (usually, we’re the ones remaking French films). This one is called “Do Not Disturb.” I haven’t seen it, but Lynn Shelton apparently did, based on this interview with Indiewire in 2019–“One of the most interesting kind of gender studies lab experiments I’ve ever experienced was watching, side by side, my version and the French version of ‘Humpday,’” Shelton said. “It is f**king fascinating.” This version was apparently very scripted whereas Shelton’s was mostly improvised; it was made with more money than Shelton could get her hands on at the time; it had French stars such as Charlotte Gainsbourg in it; and it was directed by a man, whereas part of the appeal of Shelton’s version was she was a woman putting twists on the male-buddy-comedy conventions…that’s not to say a male director can’t do that, obviously, but read the rest of the Indiewire interview and you can guess what the problem was with the French remake.

Maybe I’ll check out this “Do Not Disturb” film at some point. But first, I’ll watch “Humpday” a couple more times in the near future–maybe I’ll even turn it on after publishing this post.

By Tanner Smith

The American indie film scene felt a tragic loss in 2020 with the passing of filmmaker Lynn Shelton. Her entries in the “mumblecore” micro-budget film movement (such as “My Effortless Brilliance” and “Humpday”) made a unique impression. Everyone associated with her (including frequent collaborator Mark Duplass, who himself was a name in “mumblecore”–that’s the last time I use that word, I apologize) remember her as a lively presence that couldn’t be matched. And what’s more inspiring is that while the indie film scene was (and still is for the most part) predominantly “young” (most of the new filmmakers are in their 20s), she made her first film near the age of 40–that is a message that it’s never too late to pursue your dreams. She also improved upon her career with more films with bigger name actors, more prospects and resources, and a lot of television work–and it all seemed to really suit her fine.

While I could be writing about her most infamous film, “Humpday,” which gets better the more I watch it, I’m instead going to write about the 2014 comedy-drama “Laggies,” which she directed. “Laggies” is one of the most approachable of indie films: a happy medium between “indie” and “mainstream”–popular actors playing real characters in a down-to-earth setting with doses of comedy to level the insecurities the characters face. (Other examples include the Duplass brothers’ “Cyrus” and “Jeff, Who Lives at Home.”) In this case, it’s a coming-of-age tale involving Keira Knightley as an aimless 20something that finds her way with help from a high-school senior and her dad (the kid and her dad are played by Chloe Grace Moretz and Sam Rockwell–when you can afford talent like this in a grounded story like this, you’re already doing well for yourself).

And I love it.

While Shelton didn’t write the screenplay (that distinction goes to novelist Andrea Siegel), it still has the distinct feel of a Lynn Shelton project. (And again, for a dip into the mainstream, this is a very good thing–she showed here what she could do with more money and more collaboration.) The dialogue doesn’t feel totally scripted; the characters feel real; the comedy doesn’t feel forced; and it feels like something Lynn Shelton would make to show what else she could do outside the (*sigh* I’m sorry) mumblecore field.

Keira Knightley, doing an admirable job hiding her English accent, plays Megan, an aimless 28-year-old living in Seattle. She twirls a sign for her father’s (Jeff Garlin) tax office, she’s in a relationship with her high-school sweetheart (Mark Webber), and she’s still very close to her high-school friends. It seems something is off in her relationships; even when she cracks jokes around her friends, she feels like the odd one out as hers don’t land with them. (There’s also a moment in which she just walks into her parents’ house to chill and watch TV, something that her father is totally fine with but her mother is confused by.) And she clearly likes her boyfriend if they’ve been together for so long, but when he proposes to her…she doesn’t know how to react or what to feel.

Megan flees, needing time to think, and that’s when she meets a group of high-schoolers who are outside a liquor store and ask her to buy booze for them. After doing so (hey it’s a rite of passage, right?), Megan joins the teens for a night out and sparks a connection with one of them, named Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz). (The other teens are distinct and well-played by Kaitlyn Dever, Dylan Arnold, and Daniel Zovatto.) This is a good night for Megan–these kids aren’t judging her; they’re accepting her for who she is.

Megan spends more time with Annika and meets her single-parent lawyer father Craig, played wonderfully by Sam Rockwell–Rockwell in this role reminds me of his memorable, wisecracking, energized character in “The Way, Way Back” if he matured a little more. Megan is hiding out from friends and family to figure things out, but her story for staying with Annika and Craig is that her apartment lease expired before she has to move somewhere else. (Good enough, I guess.) Annika confides in her and Craig gradually trusts her–they even have a deeper connection they probably expected. But soon enough, the truth is going to have to come out and Megan will have to make tough decisions for her life…

Let’s talk a little about that, because the more times I watch “Laggies,” the more fascinating the subtext becomes. I’ve seen many movies that tackle arrested development and the reluctance of some people to embrace the future…but with “Laggies,” it’s a little more complicated than that. When the film begins, we’re inclined to see Megan as living in the past, seeing her high-school years as the best of her life. She and her friends are growing up together, but she seems like the odd one out. Something is different…but it doesn’t become clear what that is until midway through the film, when one of her friends (Ellie Kemper) confronts her for not being a part of the plan. What plan? Well, it’s the plan they all made as graduating high-school kids–to do everything together, do the normal, boring, everyday-life thing together, and whatever. Megan’s stasis is not from the fear of growing up; it’s from the fear of being held back by something much less than what she herself wants. That’s why these teenagers are like a breath of fresh air to her–they have all these possibilities lined up for them, and she wants to feel that way again.

It’s a very intriguing and innovative concept for this kind of film, and it’s handled beautifully–Megan isn’t the one living in the past; her friends are, and they’re trying to drag her down with them. So now she needs to decide what she’s going to do next.

With Lynn Shelton’s empathetic direction, Andrea Siegel’s layered screenplay, and solid performances from Knightley and Rockwell, “Laggies” is a terrific reminder that maturity is something that can be attained, whether you realize it or not, however old you are, or even whether or not you recognize if you already have it. Much credit for this well-earned message goes to the late, great filmmaker Lynn Shelton. She jumped at the opportunity for a career when other people might tell her it’s too late, she learned and grew from each project, and she left a terrific legacy. (By the way, check out “Humpday” if you haven’t already–that film’s a treasure. I also highly recommend others she made, such as “Your Sister’s Sister” and “Outside In.”)

And she will always be missed.

By Tanner Smith

There are so many obsessed fans out there who have been familiar with their favorite artist’s work for so long that if they try anything different from their usual craft, they get confused and/or angry and complain they “can’t” do that! (I use quotations because who the hell are we to say what artists can and can’t do?)

There are even people who FREAK OUT online when the new “Star Wars” movies and the last season of “Game of Thrones” don’t meet their expectations or standards–they even demand that they do it all over again.

Yeah, THAT’LL happen, you dorks.

Many fans are hard to please because they just want the same things they love over and over again…even though they already have the same things they love and they can go back to them whenever they want!

And in “Misery,” famous author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) faces his worst nightmare: having his life in the hands of an obsessed fan (his “number-one fan”) who forces him to write a new novel that meets HER standards. It’s a great allegory of creating art for the public versus creating art for yourself. He’s clearly not happy doing this, but it’s not his career he has to worry about if he doesn’t continue; it’s his life, literally! This sick, psychotic lady, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates in an Oscar-winning performance), keeps him sick, forces him to burn his latest book and write a new one, and even smashes his ankles so that he doesn’t get away when his broken legs mend! And he’s got no choice but to comply with her every demand and please her because he knows that it takes one little thing to turn her from sweet and kind to loud and violent, which is definitely where the suspense comes from in Bates’ performance.

James Caan’s performance is great too, as he has to play a guy who has to keep calm and keep acting like he’s ok in front of this psychopath. He knows if he slips up, he could get himself killed by his caretaker. And when he’s alone is when he shows the mental torture he’s suffering.

My favorite scene: I love the ending to this film and how Paul finally manages to obtain the upper hand with Annie, using her own methods against her. It’s a moment of sweet vengeance before things get really violent.

There’s a lot of great stuff here, and it all comes from an author who’s had his own share of physical & mental tortures (Stephen King), a director who gets his work (Rob Reiner, who also made “Stand By Me,” another King adaptation), and two brilliant performances from Caan and Bates. And it’s one of my top 100 personal faves.

By Tanner Smith

I can credit my old college buddy Jordan Mears for this one–it’s his favorite movie; the more times he talked about it or showed me clips from it, the more compelled I was to watch it. I want to thank him for influencing me to check out this delightfully “shpadoinkle” musical dark comedy from the creators of “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon.”

Made in 1993 and released by Troma in 1996, “Cannibal! The Musical” was the debut film from director Trey Parker and co-producer Matt Stone, both of whom would go on to be two of the brightest satirists in TV and film history. It tells the true story of prospector Alferd Packer, who led a doomed expedition that resulted in frostbite, death, and cannibalism among his party. Though…this movie takes some liberties, to say the least. (But this is a musical farce–so if you care about historical accuracy, this is not the movie for you.)

The film was made when Parker and Stone were film students at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It began as a three-minute trailer for film class, which then gave them funding to make a feature film out of it. While the finished film definitely has that “student-film” aspect to it, that just adds to its charm. What charm it already has comes from its love-letter approach to Hollywood musicals and Western films and just having a ton of goofy fun with it.

Parker plays Packer (though he’s credited as Juan Schwartz, named after “John Schwartz,” one of the real Alferd Packer’s alias’), and he’s an engaging performer. Whether it’s singing for laughs or singing it straight, he’s outstanding here. He plays Packer as a total goof with inexperience as a wilderness guide and a great naïveté, plus a love for his horse Liane. He leads a group of Utah miners on a journey to Colorado Territory in 1873–they are compulsive liar Humphrey (Stone), Mormon priest Shannon Bell (Ian Hardin), butcher Frank Miller (Jason McHugh), teenage horndog George Noon (Dian Bachar), and overt optimist Swan (John Hegel).

These guys are a lot of fun. They range from jolly (Swan) to cynical (Miller), and all of the actors share great chemistry together.

Blah, blah, blah–what about the songs?? They’re all memorable and fantastic. There’s the joyful opener (“Shpadoinkle”), the hopeful-wishes song (“That’s All I’m Asking For”), the lovesick ballad (actually, there are two–“When I Was On Top of You” and “This Side of Me”), the villain song (“The Trapper Song”), the optimistic song (“Let’s Build a Snowman”–my personal favorite), and the celebration of pending execution (“Hang the Bastard”). They’re all very funny too, such as when Parker sells his Roy Rogers-esque moments, we hear more through “That’s All I’m Asking For” of what everyone wants (particularly Noon, who just wants to have sex), the subtle subtext of “When I Was On Top of You” (made even funnier when you know the background behind the subplot involving the horse named Liane), when the villains (a group of trappers) stop their song to have an argument about music theory, and especially when Packer’s love interest Polly Pry (Toddy Walters) sings “This Side of Me” and a passerby stops and is confused at her performance. The reprisals are funny too, particularly when the characters are on the verge of dying and don’t have much energy to reprise “That’s All I’m Asking For.”

Oh, right, there’s a story, isn’t there? While on the journey, Packer’s horse Liane runs away, with all of the group’s food, thus beginning their problems. They get lost, find refuge at an “Indian camp” (where all the self-described “Indians” are all played by Japanese exchange students and led by Masao Maki, playing my favorite character in the movie), leave even when they’re warned it’s too dangerous to venture out in the winter, and…well, let’s just say most of them don’t make it out alive. As the late Roger Ebert used to say, a movie is not about what it is about but about how it goes about it (I don’t think he saw this movie; in his scathing review of Parker’s later film “Orgazmo,” he even hinted that he never would). With this much entertainment value, who needs a story?

Cheap and amateurish, yes; but “Cannibal! The Musical” is a rollicking good time. All the songs are memorable and quotable, as are the characters, and the movie has great comedic timing. And it would prove to be a promising start for the careers of Trey Parker & Matt Stone. (Another one of my favorite movies: “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” of course.)

By Tanner Smith

THIS is how you do found-footage horror!

I love “The Blair Witch Project” and “The Sacrament” and “Rec,” but “Creep”…WHOA!

I haven’t watched “Creep” in a long while. I’ve seen its sequel, “Creep 2,” more times just because I think it’s more interesting as its own kind of dramatic-thriller type. But “Creep” is straight-up psychological-horror and after seeing it again, almost like I was seeing it for the first time (except I know the twist obviously)…

I forgot how unsettling this movie is–even when you know the twist going into it, there’s still a lot of “uncomfortable” to sit through. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, guys–this movie scared the bejesus outta me.

“Creep” is a microbudget indie thriller created by Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice, who just decided at one point to go out to a cabin in some woods and make their own movie in which a videographer may or may not be in danger of his “creepy” subject. This was a brilliant setup for the first-person perspective setup, with our main character being a videographer named Aaron (played by Brice, who also directs the film) and filming his experience in answering an ad for a strange man named Josef (Duplass) who asks him to follow him around with his camera for a couple days. When Josef who’s already shown to have very strange qualities becomes even more disconcerting, we have no idea where this film is going to go and neither does Aaron–we ourselves are with it along with him, trying to piece some things together. THAT is how you do a found-footage/faux-doc movie!

How off-putting is Josef? I swear, it’s like you took the cringe factor out of comedies like “The Office” and “Borat” and inserted it into a horror film–you laugh but it’s OK because the alternative is to SCREAM (not just because you feel uncomfortable but because you fear for your own life at the same time)!

Mark Duplass is one of my favorite talents, but his work here makes me want to run far away from him as quickly as possible–he’s THAT creepy.

“Creep” is simplicity at its finest. For a movie about just two guys making a movie in a cabin, it makes an impression.

A hell of an impression!

Both Creep and Creep 2 are available on Netflix.

By Tanner Smith

Is the science in this outrageous comedy accurate? I like to think so. The way “Real Genius” balances wicked smarts and broad humor is enough to convince me that this movie was indeed made by real geniuses. Director Martha Coolidge (“Valley Girl,” “Rambling Rose”) and her team of writers (Neal Isreal, Pat Proft, & Peter Torokvei) obviously did a lot of research before going into this project, but even if they didn’t, I like to believe you really could do all the things the movie’s characters do if you had the wit and knowhow.

“Real Genius” is not merely one of the funnier movies about smart people (if not the funniest, period)–it’s also one of the smartest and most fun.

Although, strangely enough, it starts out rather strange. After a bland opening-credits sequence set to a lounge song followed by a biting government-experiment satire in the same vein as “Dr. Strangelove” and “WarGames,” you wonder where this film is going. Then we’re introduced to our pompous antagonist, Professor Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton, perfect at playing a pompous ass), who recruits 15-year-old Mitch (Gabe Jarret) into his university study of laser physics. Why? Where are we going from here?

And then…Chris Knight enters the picture. Chris Knight, played marvelously and brilliantly by Val Kilmer, is also on the laser team and is Mitch’s roommate. He’s very intelligent, but to Mitch’s disappointment, he’s a goof-off who uses his smarts to have fun rather than work hard.

This is when the rug is pulled out from under us, as Chris interacts with Mitch, Dr. Hathaway, and others, and we realize two important things that factor into the enjoyment for the rest of the movie: that this is a comedy and that this character is going make it fun for all of us. Chris and Mitch have a nice brotherly relationship throughout the film, as Chris teaches Mitch to loosen up and have fun once in a while–he does that for all of his dorm-mates, such as crafting an ice skating rink in the dormitory hall and turning the assembly hall into a swimming pool to throw a party with aspiring beauticians. (This guy knows how to party!) He’ll even help Mitch get revenge on a bully by dismantling the jerk’s car and reassembling it in his own room.

I love this guy! His misadventures elevate a smart comedy to a greater level. And Val Kilmer plays him flawlessly–I wholeheartedly believe this is a smart dude who knows when to keep going and when to take things serious; this is no one-dimensional party animal. (Also a plus: this is a college I would have loved to attend…maybe I did attend it!)

What makes “Real Genius” even more fun is when it gets revealed that Dr. Hathaway has been paid by the CIA to craft a laser weapon for them and is hiring these college scientists to build it because, again, he’s an arrogant ass. Neither Chris nor Mitch nor Hathaway’s slimy toady Kent (Robert Prescott) ask any questions about this laser because all they care about is passing the course and moving on to bigger things in life. But late in the film, after they successfully finish building the laser, they realize they’ve been had and decide to get even, leading to…well, I won’t give it away here, but it’s perfectly fitting for the intelligences of all involved.

Another key character who lights up the screen whenever she appears is Jordan (Michelle Meyrink), a hyperactive student who becomes Mitch’s love interest. (Never mind the age difference–it’s more cute and quirky than icky.) She never sleeps, is always working on a project, and of course, like the other characters, is highly intelligent–she’s even self-aware to the point where she accepts Mitch because he’s not afraid of her as the other guys are (even when she follows him into the men’s restroom one morning to show a sweater she knitted for him–awkward!). Does she have a disorder or is she on speed? They don’t say, but…it’s the ’80s and it’s college, so I wouldn’t rule out the second possibility.

Oh, and there’s also Laszlo Holyfeld (Jonathan Gries) who is a literal closet case. (No, for real–he disappears from Chris & Mitch’s closet into a secret tunnel to his underground home.) He’s the smartest and most eccentric character of the bunch.

Overall, “Real Genius” is a smart, fun comedy that I enjoy coming back to every now and again. And I have to credit most of that to Val Kilmer as Chris Knight–he is this movie.