While this looks as if it could be a romantic comedy (it’s about two stand-up comedians who fall in love), it is really more of a warning about the pursuit of riches and fame above everything else. That said, there are still too many elements of that stale film genre, including the cliched ending.
Avi Rosen (Modi Rosenfeld) is a Jewish comic from New York who moves to Hollywood to pursue his dream of a being famous. He moves in with his childhood friend, Dante (Godfrey Danchimah), a yoga practitioner who is also a stand-up comedian. When fellow comedian Sarah (Kathryn Fiore) becomes a love interest for Avi, Dante goes into a seriously suicidal depression while loverboy’s life begins to fall apart without him even noticing it. Again, not exactly your typical romantic comedy.
The only real fault of this film is that it often falls on the conventions we’ve all come to expect in this genre. If writer/director Michael Rainin had stayed away from them, the story would have been much stronger, but it also would have been a harder sell. It would also probably be too depressing for its intended audience, but anyone who knows anything about comedy knows there is a real fine line between it and tragedy, and this film straddles it quite nicely. Too bad it wanted to play in the cliche sandbox, too.
All in all, you could do a lot worse, and it is a film your boyfriend could watch without falling asleep. In the end, however, it feels a bit too much like a compromise of the worse sort, something its main character is very familiar with… and they both get similar results.
