The Best and the Brightest

Saw an advanced screening of this movie with a Q&A afterward with Co-Writer/Director Josh Shelov. I was on-set during one of the scenes and I thought this would be an independent PG-13 comedy. Instead, it's a very heartfelt, R-rated comedy with excellent actors.

First the movie, it was hilarious! People in the audience were laughing hysterically, so I wasn't alone. To me, there is four parts of this movie. Part 1, 2, and 4 are hysterical, and part 3 was pretty good, but not great. The writing by Josh Shelov and Michael Jaeger is witty, old-school, and just plain funny. It's been a while since I've seen a comedy that isn't sarcasm and too raunchy. This film is raunchy, yes, but in a good way. It's a farce, and a very good one. The story is very right-on and the situations are original and just hilarious.

The acting ensemble, including Peter Serafinowicz (voice of Darth Maul/Pete in Shaun of the Dead), Jenna Stern, and Amy Sedaris, are great. Neil Patrick Harris isn't great but it's cool to see him play someone other than a womanizer like Barney. Bonnie Somerville carried the leading role more than Harris. She carried the film with her unique acting skills. Another scene stealer was Christopher McDonald (remember? Shooter MaGavin in Happy Gilmore). He is a very funny guy and he needs to stick with comedy and not those TNT shows.

Overall, funny movie. If I say anymore about the story, I'll spoil it. I'm saying, anyone would be up for a real surprise.

After the film, Josh Shelov spoke to everyone in the audience. I asked him a few questions. He is witty and original guy, and if you ever see an advanced screening with a Q and A with him, ask him about his big break. It's a very fascinating and appalling story.

See this movie...

Sometimes it is enough to be clever rather than actually be talented in something. Sometimes you just do anything to get what you want. And that is what this couple is all about. The actors make this more fun than it actually has a right to be. Too many clichés, choices to interrupt conversations that do not make any sense (other than "being funny" and interruptive) and other stuff like that.

The characters are simple and the setting is too. You'll see where this is going from very early on. Some nice jokes aside this might bore some people, if they are not convinced by the actors as well. Decent try, but needed work on script level.

I saw this movie at a sneak preview screening in New York in March and I have to say that it's one of the funniest, most original comedies I've seen in a long time. It's not just a stupid-humor movie like the Farrelly Brothers and it's not a fancy highbrow comedy that only certain people will get either.

It seems to be about a couple trying to get their daughter into kindergarten, but that's just the setup - their attempts to do so start spinning more and more out of control and it becomes this crazy, fun R-rated farce. The director was at a talkback after the screening and he said he was trying to make a movie in the style of "Tootsie" and "A Fish Called Wanda," and I think he succeeded.

Neil Patrick Harris is perfect as the straight man, and Bonnie Somerville is adorable as his wife, but it's the off-the-wall characters around them who really steal the show: Amy Sedaris as the consultant they hire, Jenna Stern as the school's headmistress, Christopher McDonald as a Bill Clinton-type, known only as "The Player," Kate Mulgrew as his wife, John Hodgman as a nerdy and hilarious school board member, and British comedian Peter Serafinowicz as NPH's character's oversexed best friend.

There are two particularly hysterical sequences in the movie that I won't spoil, but totally brought the house down at my screening - a book club scene, where all of the above characters have to read some R-rated "poetry" and discuss it like they're in class, and a fundraiser/party scene where NPH's character is put on the spot and has to try to deliver his "poetry" live.

Find a way to see this movie. You won't be sorry.

This is the worst movie of 2011 so far and unlikely to be challenged. The first ten minutes are excellent, setting the stage for a lovely dramedy about a middle-class couple braving the horrors of NYC private kindergarten, with an attractive Neil Patrick Harris and Bonnie Somerville filling the bill nicely. And there's Amy Sedaris--such a winning comedian. But noooooo. Before you know it, this charming human comedy devolves into one of the unfunniest, loudest, crudest, lewdest movies imaginable. The actors are lost--Sedaris becomes monotonous, Harris a snooze, and all the rest of them unbearable. The very idea that pornographic IMs could be mistaken for poetry by sentient New Yorkers is so unbelievable that the whole premise falls apart, and it just gets worse and worse by the nanosecond. This is one of the most inept films in memory.

I shut it off after 31 minutes. I decided to register and logon at minute 13. It is unbearable. The characters are straight out of sitcoms. There is no more loathsome character than whoever Amy Sedaris is trying to be. Every headmistress of the schools is the dimmest cow each one dimmer and more awful than the last. I really can't tell you more than that because it is so awful. We get it, really we do. Getting your snowflake into a private Manhattan kindergarten is harder than winning every Nobel prize a Pulitzer an Oscar and a MacArthur genius grant on the same say while giving birth to the Messiah and successfully operating the world's biggest hedge fund.