While making his living as a chimney sweeper (no need to make any chim-chiminey jokes; this film does it more than you could ever hope for), Jack struggles with finding his own voice for his paintings. Shortly after the film begins, Jack’s mother tells him that the family chimney sweeping business, of which Jack is employed and which mom and pop run, will need to be taken over by him as his folks are retiring. Thus begins Jack’s dilemma of trying to figure out just what he wants to do with his life – continue with his painting in hopes of perhaps making a career out of being an artist, or take over the successful family business and be financially secure.
Hold on now. There’s time for fun, too. In fact, Jack has a couple of buddies, Bob and Lenny, and they spend an abundance of their free time chasing a*s and blabbering about their latest sexual adventures. Now, even though these guys seemed to be having a good time, I can’t say I was. It’s not that I minded them being total pigs, it’s that they just weren’t funny. The conversations these guys have are the type of stuff you’d expect to hear in a high school locker room. The old Scooby Doo stoner theory is even brought up. Keep beating that horse, but it’s not going anywhere…it’s been dead for years.
That’s where I had a problem with this film the most – it seemed like it wanted to be funny, but it just wasn’t. And that’s not really the fault of the performances as they weren’t bad at all, it’s just the material they’re given is lacking the funny, even though the script does manage to pull off a somewhat charming story about an artist struggling with his own identity.
