Somebody Up There Likes Me, 2012.
Written and Directed by Bob Byington.
Starring Nick Offerman, Jess Weixler and Keith Poulson.
SYNOPSIS:
A comedy about a man, his best friend, and the woman they both adore watching their lives fly by.
Bob Byington’s Somebody Up There Likes Me is the kind of quirky comedy drama that will eschew sense, warmth and reason for the sake of a gag. Think Wes Anderson, minus the very formal visuals. Serious investment in the characters or their plights is near-impossible, because Somebody Up There Likes Me so often is willing to sacrifice it all for a quick, oddball laugh; lead character Max taking flowers from a memorial and gifting them to his ex-wife, for example. And yet, somehow, the film manages to work on an emotional level.
But before I can say ‘take that, Wes Anderson’, it has to be said that Somebody Up There Likes Me only draws on the quirky indie comedies that preceded it. It’s hardly original, and it’s cutesy at moments it doesn’t need to be (one character has an addiction to bread sticks. Whacky!). Cartoon sequences are called upon now and again, and the action moves on at the gimmicky inter-title cue of ‘Five Years Later’ every few minutes, only to see that the world is the same and everyone has hardly aged.
That includes Max, dryly played by the excellent Keith Poulson, who doesn’t age at all throughout the 30-year time span (all is explained at the end, with another unnecessary quirk). It’s likely all the tics and storytelling oddities are to cover up the film’s lack of much in the way of actual plot. It’s often amusing, with not a foot put wrong by the game cast, but typically lacking narrative drive. So why, then, is it so curiously moving?
It could be the melancholic score (by Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio – who else?). More likely, it’s because there’s a universal truth in the central theme – that of time’s harsh, unrelenting nature – regardless of how it’s presented. The characters start young, marry other young people, then grow old, and bitter, then apart, then – eventually – they die, with only a lonely tombstone to commemorate their memory. And that’s pretty damn affecting.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
Originally published April 15, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
