Sunday, August 22, 2010

The Puffy Chair, lo-fi indie road trip movie worth seeing

The Puffy Chair (2005)
Jamal's Rating: 4 stars
Netflix Average Rating: 2.8 stars

Mark Duplass is the kind of protagonist you don't often see in movies, one of low moral fiber, who will backtrack his way to the bottom just to save ten bucks at a roadside motel when the manager seems suspicious he is harboring passengers. He brings his girlfriend along on a road trip to buy a special comfy chair to deliver to his dad on his birthday. The couple share a mutual attraction, but their relationship boils with tension and we wonder at some point if it's heading for a meltdown. Also along for the ride is Mark's brother, played by Rhett Wilkins, a hippy peacemaker who could stare for hours at an anole lizard in the grass. These guys The Duplass Brothers (Jay directs) are a big hit on the independent film circuit, and it's fairly easy to see why; their films have absorbing stories and they aren't afraid to show the warts on their characters. They employ a little too much steadycam, but it's usually not too distracting, and small studios don't have a lot of money to spend on fancy dollies and stuff anyways. Here is a lively road trip film where the characters suffer a lot of unpleasantness, mostly through their own fault, but survive to see the next scene not from wit, but out of stubborn will. A special caution: the Netflix community in large didn't take too kindly to this film, vexed by the main character's excessive use of the words "man" and "dude". I didn't really notice though.

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