You know how when you decide to do a big clean of the house
and you’ve made a concise list of all the jobs you need to get done, after a
day or so you realise that you’re not even half way through the list? And then
you ask yourself how this could happen because really there were only like… four
major jobs to do; tidy, clean, vacuum and mop. So you look back and realise
that as you tidied you found yourself getting distracted with other little jobs
that you thought “oh I’ll just quickly do that” like organising your DVD
collection. And at first you thought alphabetically is the best way and so you
did that. Then once you’re done you decide that system actually sucks so you decide
to organise them by genre. But then that doesn’t work either because you only
really have comedy, rom com and tv shows, so you then organised them into
groups ranging from favourite movies and tv shows down to the ones you bought
for $5 and only ever watched that one time. But then you think that maybe that’s
just going to get confusing and maybe it will keep you from ever revisiting
those forgotten movies that perhaps deserve a second chance. So you go back to
the alphabetical system. You know what that’s like, right? No? Okay, well I do.
And this long winded introduction is my way of explaining why I haven’t written
on this blog for so long. Every time I went to do it I got side-tracked looking
up things like the correct spelling of an actor’s name or where the movie was
filmed and then inevitably got hooked on watching girls playing amazing bass
guitar riffs and clips from SNL and also that amazing internet comedy ‘Ted and
Gracie’ and then I’d forget what I was doing on the internet in the first place.
Not for nothin kids but I have a crazy short attention span. Probably why I
always walk out of the supermarket with packs of colourful textas, double sided
sticky tape and aromatic hand moisturizer instead of what you’re actually
supposed to get at the shops. Milk, coffee, groceries etc. All logic is
forgotten when I see anything colourful. And then after a while of forgetting
to post, I ended up forgetting my password. And to make matters worse I’d
changed my mobile number during my long hiatus and so when the helpful people at
gmail tried sending me a text with my new code, it wouldn’t work. So I was
completely banned from visiting my own goddam blog! It’s my freakin blog gmail!
Get your head in the game! But I eventually worked it out and I’m back online!
YAY! Let me just quickly see if that chick has any new bass rifs to watch…..
no. We’re cool.
Okay, so after that insanely long and tedious rant I will
move on to the movie I’m reviewing today. And by today I obviously mean a year
ago. I wrote it a year ago, but I’m posting it today. We all up to speed? Good!
It’s called Sleepwalk With Me and it
is the creation of comedian, writer, actor and director Mike Birbiglia. If you
haven’t seen the movie or any of his stand up comedy, you may actually remember
him from his hilarious cameo in the first season of ‘Girls’ as the guy with mood
swing issues who interviews Hannah for a job she inevitably doesn’t get. This
guy is great, and his comedy is very diverse. None of those usual blokey jokes
that we’ve come to expect from American comedians like “Oh women are elusive! I
like porn! Why are dogs wearing clothes? Cheese is delicious!” yeh guys, we get
it; you’re dudes. But Mike Birbiglia is not that sort of comic. And this movie
is just wonderful.
Simply put; the film follows Matt Pandamiglio (played by
Mike Birbiglia) as he struggles with relationships, stress induced sleepwalking
and breaking into the comedy scene. But it’s so much more than just the story
of an aspiring comedian whose life is a bit of a mess. Matt isn’t a great comedian at the start. His
material isn’t very good and it’s mostly because he doesn’t really have a lot
to talk about. It’s only when he starts joking about his girlfriend and their
relationship that he gets any real attention. The change in his comedy style
leads to interest from an agent who deals mostly in small venue gigs that don’t
pay much and are quite a ways away. Matt accepts the offer to do a sort of
comedy road trip and sets off on a bizarre journey from comedy club to comedy
club. The stress of this plus the anxiety he feels about the direction his life
is taking and his inability to communicate his concerns starts to affect him in
very odd ways. Matt’s sleepwalking becomes more and more adventurous leading
him to do anything from taking a shower fully clothed at a friend’s house all
the way up to jumping out a window. It’s hilarious and scary at the same time,
because you don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. Matt is a likeable, albeit
kind of spineless, guy and the people in his life are all very relatable and
affable. I love Abby, his girlfriend. And I love that she’s played by Lauren
Ambrose. Does anyone else remember that gorgeous red hair from the classic 90s
comedy ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’? Cos I sure do. She was such a surly bitch in that
flick, but that hair… my GOD that hair! Delicious! And I feel she’s perfect in
the role of Matt’s free-spirited and ever supportive partner Abby. It’s just
too bad he’s too much of a dick to realise how amazing she is. I mean he kind
of does, I’m probably being unfair to him, but he clearly feels he’s not into
the relationship anymore and can’t seem to deal with or know what to do about
it.
There seems to be a very strict format when it comes to big
budget films and to be honest I get kind of sick of the monotony of it all. I
hate when you watch a film and after about 10 minutes you know how it’s going
to end. I mean, where’s the mystery? Where’s the drama? Where’s the suspense? These
are the things I rarely get in my films and often get in my relationships.
Ideally it’d be the other way around but ya can’t win em all, right?! I don’t
want to just go through the motions with a film, I want to have no idea what’s
going to happen. And in Sleepwalk With Me, I was exquisitely unsure of how any
of it would turn out. I also appreciated how Matt sort of retells the story of
when all this sleepwalking business happened but keeps from going into too much
detail of what his up to now. The whole talking-to-the-camera style isn’t always affective, but I believe it
works here. Mostly because this whole thing was based on real life events which
Mike later turned into an off-Broadway show and then eventually made into a
movie, this movie. When a main actor talks directly to the audience it can
sometimes jolt the movement of the story which kind of takes you out of the
experience which isn’t good. But I think
this style propels the story and helps the natural flow of the movie. Oohh Sorry
guys that sounded wanky… What I mean is it was cool and I liked it and it
reminded me that this is a comedian doing a comedy movie about his life. Much
better!
It is a really cool and refreshing film and if I haven’t
sufficiently convinced you to go see it (or now, almost a year after its
release, rent it) then here’s the clincher: this film contains the funniest diagnosis
of what sleepwalkers are doing wrong that I have ever heard. I won’t ruin it
for you but when one of Matt’s friends finds him showering in the middle of the
night and Matt explains that he was having a dream, this guy says sums up
sleepwalking in one perfectly flippant comment. Even now, a year later, I sometimes
think of that line and laugh hysterically. The characters are people you would
want to be friends with and the relationships in this movie, with all their ups
and downs, are actually really relatable. I know that sometimes it’s good to go
see a film where the people in it are faced with such horrific adversity that
it makes you thankful for what you have, and opens your eyes to the problems in
the world. But sometimes it’s also nice to go see a film about all the little idiosyncrasies
we face when attempting to navigate our own lives. I personally have a rough
time trying to connect with people sometimes. And I know that I am often guilty
of letting relationships develop in a way that I’m not happy with, just because
I can’t find the words to speak up. So I do relate to Matt’s plight. The film
is funny as hell but it also doesn’t diminish the issues these people face. And
just to end on a predictable note, I felt very bashful when Matt’s dad lectures
him about his wayward life. I am no stranger to that lecture and so I almost
started apologizing for my failures right there in the movie theater. Luckily I
worked out it wasn’t real life before I admitted my insanity to everyone at the
screening. Gotta be happy for small victories, right?!
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