People Places Things

Having seen Mark Ruffalo take pieces of the scenery as a bipolar dad in Infinitely Polar Bear, I was happy to settle down with a slower, more-measured, drier dad with Jermaine Clement as Will Henry in the charming People Places Things. Both dads face fatherhood with good intentions and occasionally laughs, but it's Will's good will and unassuming persona that won my heart.

A recently-single graphic novelist, Will is not an aggressive dad, and yet, with the two sweetest cello playing twins (Aundrea and Gia Gadsby—watch for these two to become bigger than the Olsens) this side of Disneyland, it's not difficult just to let them play at your heartstrings, as he does. His illustrating helps us get inside the head of this brainy introvert, who otherwise would be just a nice guy.

His ex, Charlie (Stephanie Allynne), is sweet and warm but has had enough of his passivity and is ready to wed bulbous Gary (Michael Chernus), who takes passive to a new level. Both men are starving artists while she is from a wealthy family, elements that give richness to what could have been a clichéd character.

In the Seinfeld tradition, nothing much happens, a sure sign that everything is happening. In this Sundance Grand-Jury-Prize-nominated film, Charlie is conflicted about Will just as Will connects with his student Kat's (Jessica Williams) mom, Diane (Regina Hall), another warm character who makes you think about switching to writing comic books to get girls.

To be fair to Will, he's as charming as a nerd could be, well meaning, a great dad, and shyly clueless about the battle of the sexes.

Charmingly every-day and cynically sweet, James Strouse's People, Places, Things (2015) is a playful illustration of the struggles of heartsick, 40-something nice-guys. We all know them: divorced and a bit adrift with a couple of kids, trying to understand the gap between where their life is and where they imagined it would be. This film is absolutely for the faint of heart; lightweight and quippy, it keeps a pretty steady comedic roll and is definitely not lacking in its share of flimsy sitcom-style tropes. Cutesy jokes about grown men being unable to dress well and efficiently care for themselves and their kids abound. Idiot students invariably disrupt class and make jokes about masturbation. Crazy wives are crazy. The impeccable comedic execution of main character Will, played by Jemaine Clement, as well as supporting cast members Stephanie Allynne, Regina Hall, and Jessica Williams, definitely elevate this film from just a pleasant and heartwarming flick to a cleverly executed, if light, comedic experience. What this film lacks in profundity, it makes up for in relatability and spirit raising adorableness that has the potential to appeal to a wide audience.

Will is a graphic novelist and professor in New York, who separates from his partner Charlie (Allynne) within the first five minutes of the film after he stumbles upon her alone with another man, and in his t-shirt, upstairs at their twin daughters' birthday party. He then finds himself relegated to a lonely apartment in Astoria, suddenly thrown off course and missing Charlie and his daughters. Seeing his thinly veiled gloom in class, college student Kat (Williams) invites him to her home for dinner with the intention of fixing him up with her mother Diane, a quick witted Columbia University professor played by Hall. A guarded romance ensues while Will struggles over the increasing complexity of his dynamic with Charlie, as well as his new life, fatherhood, and just general inability to pull himself together. Close camera-work connects us intimately to each defeated response and hilariously mumbling reproach Will dishes out to those around him. Comedy strongman Clement flawlessly carries the timing and tone of this amusingly reflective film. The musical score by Mark Orton is gently bright and upbeat, appropriately unobtrusive for its lightweight context. Will's own comics charmingly serve as a secondary source for connectivity with the backstory and not-so-underlying narrative of detached loneliness for a character that had seemingly always desired to be a touch farther removed from those around him that he managed to be - until now.

Will's comics are a good symbol for the film itself - quirky, cute, superficially grazing the human condition and leaving little work to the viewer in decoding Will's underlying emotions. We don't have to think too much - just as when reading a comic the thoughts and sentiment are right there in plain sight. There's not much to be done beyond minding the "gap" between your comic's panels, as Will covers in class, riding close to the line of obviating the weightiest symbolism this film has to offer, while its main man searches for what was missed in the in-between spaces he may not have been giving the necessary attention. Still, the film manages to toe that line effectively, maintaining its romantic comedy air while staying equally rooted in realistic emotions and resolutions.

While Clement played a significant role in helping to elevate this film, for me, his presence also detracted oddly. As pleasant and consistent as this film was, I found myself continually expecting the disarming peculiarity and heart of the directorial influence of Clement's usual partner in film Taika Waititi (What We Do in The Shadows, and Eagle vs. Shark). It's quirky and very personal air seemed to nod to the same stylistic motivations, but failed to deliver that level of uniqueness and sentiment that really makes films like Waititi's sink into your pores and stay there. Yet, much of the charm of People, Places, Things may be found in its ordinariness. A pleasantly accessible film with ample charisma and comedic talent, People, Places, Things is nothing more (or less!) than an effortlessly funny, easy to watch and easy to like crowdpleaser.

Kind of like The Florida Project for divorcing and dating and remarrying couples. Everything falls apart, but kids maintain the center. The center of pizza, the center of needing to go, the center of cello and French lessons. Dad dawdles over his drawings and manages to bump into the feelings of everyone he encounters. Emotionally clumsy, he, and helpless and hapless to boot.

But it was ever this way. Anyone who has ever been in love knows what a glorious mess it is.

What a cute, very realistic, dramatic comedy of people like us, making mistakes like us, very passionate, the characters, the little girls are cute, simple and clumsy, but good and with good will, in the desire to get it right, loves and love affairs, doubts about relationships, a complex and well-translated atmosphere, making everything very simple, cute, simple and romantic...

Will (Jermaine Clement), a somewhat introverted and pessimistic graphic novelist walks in on his partner, Charlie (Stephanie Allynne), having sex with another man while, downstairs, friends are enjoying a party to celebrate the fifth birthday of the couple's twin girls.

Fast forward a year and we find Will still coming to terms with his single status. However, following an awkward and initially misunderstood conversation with Kat (Jessica Williams), one of the students at the college where Will scrapes together a living as a part-time teacher, he finds himself set up on a dinner date with Kat's mother, Diane (Regina Hall). The date does not go well and Diane, herself a teacher at the prestigious Columbia University, is dismissive of Will's line of work both in literary terms, and as an art form.

The date, and the news that the now-pregnant Charlie is marrying her lover, leave Will contemplating both the possibilities for the future and the realisation that he still has feelings for Charlie, but he's unsure exactly what those feelings are.

Writer/director, Jim Strouse has written a sparky, quotable script which showcases Clement's comic timing, his understated acting style and his ability to show an entire confused train of thought with a fleeting facial expression. Allyne plays Charlie as a likeable woman and a good mother, but her self-focus ensures that our sympathies stay with Will. The twin girls (Aundrea and Gia Gadsby) quietly steal every scene they're in.

Strouse has a sure but light hand on the directorial tiller, and keeps the film on a course of relatable realism. We can understand Will being baffled by life at times and we feel his shock when reality bites him on the bum. None of the characters are larger than life, but all have ample substance to maintain our interest in them, and the fate of Will's on/off relationship with Diane keeps the audience curious about what the next act will bring.

Chris Teague's cinematography has a fresh, bright look to it, although when combined with the art direction and score, every frame leaves you in no doubt that you are watching an indie rom-com.

The story is told in such a way that not everything is spelled out for us and we must join the dots ourselves, just as when Will tells his students that the gaps between the panels in a comic can contain as much information as the panels themselves. The scenes in the classroom, along with Wills drawings (by artist Gray Williams), are used to illustrate Will's state of mind, with the students acting as a quasi-Greek-chorus to help the narrative along.

This sweet, good-hearted film is perhaps underserved by a wistfully equivocal ending, but Mark Orton's score over the final scene tells us that perhaps everything might just turn out all right after all.