The Great New Wonderful

Seemingly mild-mannered Sandie (Jim Gaffigan) is treated by company therapist Dr. Trabulous (Tony Shalhoub). Allison (Judy Greer) and David Burbage (Tom McCarthy) have volatile son Charlie. Judy Hillerman (Olympia Dukakis) is a jewish wife in a cold marriage. Cake designer Emme Keeler (Maggie Gyllenhaal) has a big upcoming presentation. Danny Keeler (Will Arnett) is her husband and Safarah Polsky (Edie Falco) is her big competitor. Avi and Satish are immigrants from India on a security assignment. These separate stories are happening in and around Manhattan.

This is stacked filled with good actors. The problem is that none of the stories are that compelling. They are barely connected in a peripheral way . They are lackluster separately and aimless. There is limited overarching themes. The indie filming is low res digital. Other than the great cast, there is nothing here. I can't even pick one story that I want to follow.

The Great New Wonderful is about several groups of people all living in NY after 9/11 and running up to the first anniversary 9/11/2002. Each group has their own demons to deal with, seemingly as a result of the memories of 9/11, but the film doesn't deal directly with the event itself. You get to know the characters and how ordinary their lives are and then things get kind of wacky as the first anniversary approaches. More of a drama than a comedy, this film is technically top notch, but it is emotionally heavy, almost smothering. Perhaps it's best to stay away from films released in Sept to avoid getting beaten down by the heavy and repetitive themes of overt sadness and ptsd.

The appearance of "United 93" and "The Great New Wonderful" at around the same time is a very fitting artistic take on the impact of 9/11 on the hearts and minds of Americans. So many other films have cropped up here and there, nearly all of them heartless polemical tirades from various points of view, which I think reflected more on feelings and opinions that existed before 9/11 and merely used the tragedy as a vehicle.

While "United 93" was a monument to the victims of 9/11, and how they faced down the human and political significance of that morning, "The Great New Wonderful" is a reflection of how the rest of us live with the personal, emotional aftermath of that day, whether we had a direct connection to the events or not.

"The Great New Wonderful" will probably be the only film dubbed a '9/11 movie' which didn't resort to any melodramatic exposition from that day to make its point. No flaming towers, no cheap-and-easy "my brother, the fireman who died/my sister, who was in Tower 1/my father, the cop...." plot devices. It vividly demonstrates the emotional, collateral role that 9/11 played in the lives of tens of millions of Americans who lived through that day and were shaken and transformed in ways that were too personal to articulate to others or themselves.

Beyond the film's calendar setting and the concluding moments which take place at about 9am on September 11, 2002, there is only one oblique reference to the attacks impacting a character directly, hidden among the films many humorous lines (an apt New York coping mechanism woven through the whole script), and it becomes a climax of its own, the moment in the story when each character's pent-up personal hell explodes forth.

Mid-way through the film, many of the far-flung characters end up together in an elevator. There is a sudden jolt, the lights flicker, and the sound of rattling cables and wires fills the space. It is a mere moment. Then, the elevator restarts and arrives at the floor of Sandie (Jim Gaffigan), who has spent the film attending therapy sessions in his company's break room with Dr. Trabulous (played by the sublime Tony Shaloub) to discuss some unnamed office tragedy which took place on "the 7th floor" of the company's offices in which several co-workers were killed. Sandie steps off the elevator, and a cranky old man in the back corner, seen earlier asking a cantankerous question at a Queens neighborhood meeting, mutters "well, you made it out alive," to which the cheery Sandie replied, "yeah!" and smiles. Minutes later, Sandie has finally opened up with Dr. Trabulous, in tears, realizing that behind his scarily cheerful, productive, doe-eyed American veneer he is seething with rage and anguish and trauma. In due course, the explosion inside Sandie is so primal that he leaves the doctor with a head wound on the floor and flees on foot to his parents' home in Connecticut.

But Sandie is an exception -- being the only presumed direct victim of the attacks, he is the only one with a doctor caring for his wounds. The rest of the characters -- from Olympia Dukakis' somnabulent, elderly housewife to the self-absorbed yuppie couple (Judy Greer and Thomas McCarthy) who cannot grasp the venality of their son's mental illness -- like us were left to struggle alone. Perhaps the most ingenious subplot involves the pointless rivalry between Maggie Gyllenhaal and Edie Falco, a signature New York/U.S. upper-class drama in a laughably (but all too believable) superfluous world where rich, idiotic clients pay tens of thousands of dollars for birthday cakes, and the two wealthy cake-artists are vying for the decisive favor of a spoiled, uninterested teen-aged heiress. (Will Arnett's turn as Gyllenhaal's pampered husband is a great touch.) So brilliant -- cakes! -- representing the ruthless spiritual hollowness of so much of Manhattan's gliteratti before 9/11, and as Falco says in her one, powerful scene, "it's amazing how after everything that has happened, everything is still the same."

"The Great New Wonderful" is such an unsentimental, powerfully true look in the mirror; it is required-viewing in the 9/11 oeuvre. While "United 93" is a raw, draining and ultimately necessary catharsis akin to an open-casket wake, this film will stay with you much, much longer. It makes stark moral statements -- some might even argue it explores the human, non-political, universal root of the murderous criminality of 9/11 itself -- and sometimes the audience's reaction in the theater (keep an eye out for when the nervous laughter in the room subsides, or if it subsides at all) is just as fascinating as the action on screen.

Not bad but not so great either, "The Great New Wonderful" suffers from IIS: Insufferable Indie Syndrome. In trying to serve up a few slices of life in post 9/11 New York, the director of the truly wonderful comedies "Dude, Where's My Car?" and "Harold and Kumar" tries awful hard to be Subtle, Tasteful, and Artistic. The problem is, the results are way TOO Subtle, Tasteful, and Artistic. So much so that there are practically no emotions, no connections, no dramatic effect. Even a handful of very good performances can't save the underwritten script and lackluster direction.

Memo to the Director: GO BACK TO COMEDY! (It actually takes a lot more skill and creativity to produce a clever comedy than to churn out another clichéd indie drama.)

The title is a comment made by Sandie (Jim Gaffigan), a patient of Dr. Trabulous (Tony Shaloub), who is trying to deal with his life's problems. It perfectly describes the feeling I had when I watched this film, which is supposed to be four stories about New Yorkers dealing with the trauma brought on by 9/11.

What trauma? Emme (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is trying to get a cake order, and her main competitor (Edie Falco) is not happy that she is the Queen of Cake at the moment.

David (Thomas McCarthy) and Allison (Judy Greer) are so distraught over their monster of a kid that they haven't had sex in 27 days.

Judy (Olympia Dukakis) has a boring life taking care of a husband that just watches TV.

Avi (Naseeruddin Shah) cheated on his wife for the first time.

Are we supposed to believe that all this came about as a result of 9/11. Give me a break! We are watching normal stories about normal lives that would go on regardless of tragedy or trauma.

The lives we see are really not that interesting.