Pretty ballsy of the filmmakers to go with the title “Enemies of Laughter,” seeing that it’s a comedy. They’re just handing their critics ammunition if the film turns out to be stinky. Fortunately, “Enemies” winds up being enjoyable, even though the only character I really liked was the main one, played by David Paymer. Everyone else I wanted to whack in the a*s with a tire iron. Let me explain…
David Halpern (Paymer) is a somewhat gloomy writer who tosses his dream of writing plays on the backburner for a career of pounding out jokes for shitty television sitcoms. He also isn’t the biggest ladies man. These two things keep David consistently bummed, even though he keeps a sharp sense of humor about his station in life. So basically, we have kind of a normal guy here – he’s not incredibly happy with his job (who is?) and he’s not lucky in love (many aren’t). The guy’s not the elephant man or anything.
Being that this is so, I don’t understand why many of the pivotal people in his life turn on him, kind of in the way of an intervention. Everyone seems to think that David is f*****g his life up royally and they have no qualms about laying into him about it. Jesus, so the guy’s a little unhappy. I mean, maybe I totally misinterpreted what was going on here, but I thought David came off as an alright guy. He certainly doesn’t deserve all the s**t that’s heaped upon him. In fact, it got to a point where I wanted David to kill himself, not because I didn’t like him, but because I wanted his “friends” to feel sorry about being such shitheads.
So, basically, I just didn’t understand what was going on here. It’s like a “Twilight Zone” episode this guy’s life turns into. Still, there are some great performances here with David providing all of the humor…when not having to defend himself against his friends.
