‘The Extra Man’ is enjoyably eccentric
On the Cine Synapse rating scale, this film receives a:
Nah
Take It or Leave It
Well Worth Your While
Must See
***
Say your son is a preppy lit major and a bit of a dilettante. What future could there possibly be for him? Presuming, that is, that he doesn’t go on to professional school the way lit majors are supposed to once they’re scared straight by a grounded relative or career counselor. A professorship? Good luck! School teacher? Perhaps, if he lacks ambition. Writer? God help you. Journalist? Pity the fool.
But fear not! There’s another path, or at least a supplementary one, as we learn in Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s enjoyably eccentric, low key new farce, The Extra Man, which they coscripted with Jonathan Ames based on his novel. Berman and Pulcini proved in American Splendor (2003) that they know how to take intelligent risks when it comes to a surly blending of character study and comedy. They do likewise here, in this quirky tale of sexual, chronological, and fiscal disorientation in Manhattan, capitalizing on an excellent cast led by a scruffily suave Kevin Kline.
Louis Ives (Paul Dano, looking like a wan, WASPy lost lamb) teaches English at a Northeastern prep school, enthusiastically if stiffly explicating the marvels of Fitzgerald to his affluent charges. Swept up in the flapper-era romance, he’s dressed to a T and every inch a gentleman, except that he has this itsy little urge to dress up as a gentlewoman, especially fancying the lingerie. When a misstep in that arena gets him dismissed from his teaching position, he takes the opportunity to move to New York and try his hand at writing. He finds a day job selling ads for an environmental magazine and sublets a room from one Henry Harrison (Kline), a failed playwright and erstwhile world traveler who has burned through his money and found a niche for himself as an “extra man,” or escort to rich, elderly women, particularly the ninetysomething Vivian (a rapacious, gleaming-eyed Marian Seldes).
Nothing in the befuddled Louis’s life fits tidily into categories. He likes women, but so much so that he toys with becoming one. His mind is in the 20s; but his car, a huge gas-guzzler that he associates with his deceased father, is in the 70s; and his green-advocacy job is distinctly new millennium. He cares for the environment, of course, but likes eggs too much to be vegan and spareribs too much to be vegetarian. You might say that he’s a young man of principles that he can’t quite adhere to.
Perhaps Louis is able to bond with the crabby, manipulative, but undeniably vivacious Henry because he, too, is difficult to peg and less than consistent. Nominally and rantingly conservative politically, he’s certainly not profoundly judgmental. He seems of somewhat unstable sexuality. And he has a taste for the luxurious life, but on the criminal cheap (conning his way into the opera and whatnot). He’s Charles Winchester III from M*A*S*H crossed with Paul Varjak from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, seasoned with a dash of namesake Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady. Kline pushes the part to the brink of caricature, but because his role is a self-conscious quasi-caricature anyway, I’m pretty sure the approach is justified. It also plays off his ambisexual filmography from titles like In & Out and De-Lovely.
What’s convivial about The Extra Man is that it reveals its untidy characters in an appropriately untidy way, never surging into hyped, raucous “hilarity ensues” sex gags or easy marriage-comedy couplings. More in keeping with the Wes Anderson universe, The Extra Man’s fun is a little miserable and its miseries a little fun–all a big unholy social stew.
Big-eyed, gawky Louis has simmering hots for his adorable office mate Mary (a brittle and charming Katie Holmes), but while the plot hints that there may be a place for them as a couple, it’s clear that Louis has psychological miles to go before he can find much common ground with any significant other whom he doesn’t pay by the hour. Similarly connected, but not, are Henry and his friend Gershon (the ubiquitous John C. Reilly in a shifting character romp), who lives downstairs. As with Henry’s former flatmate, a cosmopolitan hunchback whom Henry suspects has stolen his prized play manuscript, Gershon’s exact relationship with Henry is murky, but with romantic and sexual vibes aplenty.
Yet do these tangled social and psychological boundaries make Henry and, possibly, Louis, who becomes Henry’s protege of sorts, less or more valuable as extra men?
Like flirtatious, preening elderly widows who decide they’re eternal debutantes, the extra men, we discover, fill an essential role in the unconventional world for the very reasons that they fill no obvious essential role in the conventional world. In the lid-for-every-pot universe, they are the dented, weirdly colored, poorly-sealing tops to assorted vintage cookery. The Extra Man entertainingly intimates that such odds and ends, in people as in objects, are almost always a tad unseemly, but often very valuable as well.
Release Note: The Extra Man premieres on Video On Demand, Amazon, Vudu, XBOX Live, and Playstation on June 25, and opens in theaters July 30, 2010.
‘Best Worst Movie’: fond tribute to a crappy cult flick
On the Cine Synapse rating scale, this film receives a:
Nah
Take It or Leave It
Well Worth Your While
Must See
***
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[...] 'The Extra Man' is enjoyably eccentric Video On the Cine Synapse rating scale, this film receives a: Nah Take It or Leave It Well Worth Your While Must See *** Say your son is a preppy lit major and a bit of a dilettante. What future could there possibly be for him? Presuming, that is, that he doesn't go on to professional [...] Alex Kafka Cine Synapse New Post1 day ago [...]