In the midst of a park and on a bench sits Jasper (John Strozier), a somewhat overweight man, eating and starring at girls jogging by. Through voice-over narration, Jasper tells us what he thinks of each girl and what he liked to them (and how he’d like it to be done). Yet, he never finds the courage to actually approach one of them, no matter how close they get to him, to ask them out.
Thankfully for his friend, he gets set up on a blind date with Elise (Hillary Goldsher). He arrives at her door complete with rose in hand, and at first she seems disappointed at the look of him, but smiles and takes it on anyway. For a while, things go great for the couple. When real life finally kicks in, Jasper opens up his true feelings of love to her (after some sex of course), which isn’t exactly the kind of ride she was looking for.
There are only three words of actual spoken dialog in this film, the rest is all narration. Sometimes a lot of voice-over work can kill a film but “Better Unsaid” puts it to good use. Jasper is the kind of character that has self-esteem issues and clearly can’t speak what’s on his mind, but he has a good enough imagination for plenty of interesting thoughts. His thoughts will probably sound more familiar to the male audience out there, and while it is often humorous, you can’t help but wish for something more. “Better Unsaid” was a good (not great) exercise for filmmaker Brandon Walter; it will be nice to see what he kind of project he attempts next.
