Girlfriend's Day

Not for everyone admittedly, but rejecting it simply for the reason it is something off-beat and irregular is just a mistake.

This 70 minutes long satiric comedy sketch gives one an askew glimpse into the greeting-card and holiday industry.

Simple yet complex. Movie lovers will find little echoes of some films and TV-shows mixed in this bit. Most palpable influences I dare say were Enemy(Villeneuve), Punch-drunk Love, Dr. Strangelove, and for some oddly surprising reason some parts of Mulholland Dr.

I found it to be filled with heart, brains and subtlety.

Nothing serious, just a well written, very well acted and directed elongated sketch. Some will be bored to tears, some others (like me) will be enjoying this one with an idiotic smile on their faces. Watch and see for your self.

I had no expectations and didn't look into the movie before I watched it. I just put this on, knowing Bob Odenkirk was in it.

I don't really understand why, but it seemed like the plot was intentionally nonsensical and simple. It was a weird mix of very predictable and very confusing. Like a greeting card, perhaps?

I enjoy experimental movies just as well as popular ones, but after watching it, I can't help but feel like it should either have been shorter, or had more content.

What I'm really trying to wrap more nicely than it feels, is that I think the writing felt unfinished. Or perhaps the first sketch after a writer's block. Yeah, that bad. I think the only moral or interesting point brought up in the movie was the quote in the opening scene.

Yet, I still enjoyed Bob's acting, but none of the characters really stood out to me in this one. I guess most notable to me was Natasha Lyonne, playing her usual playful character and Steven Michael Quezada playing his usual dutiful and determined working-class character. Amber Tamblyn had a few interesting moments as well - but it all felt very rushed and underdeveloped.

I'll be very surprised if this will end up rated highly. I think I might even have overrated it.

The script, the actors, the production values here are excellent.

There's just one thing that ruins it.

The director. Michael Paul Stephenson decided "I want this to be a slice of life movie", instead of a film noir movie. He could have made this artistic and hilarious, bu the decided instead to screw the entire production over. The guy just totally ruined what could have been a fantastic film.

He's a dickhead. Watch this film and try to imagine it much darker, much more stylized, and like an homage to the 1940s/1950s films of Fred McMurray, Humphrey Bogart. Laurent Bacall and Ingrid Bergman. This could have been so much better. SO much better.

There is a fair amount to enjoy here: the performances are as good as you'd expect from the likes of Odenkirk - if anyone could make writing a greetings card interesting, then Bob's your man.

But I was disappointed with the direction the plot took - which steered away from the central premise of a slightly surreal and quirky tale of a divorced, down-on-his-luck, greetings card writer who, faced with redundancy (in multiple areas), is presented with an opportunity for romance and redemption.

This promising scenario was somewhat side-lined in favour of a murder plotline (this is all in the trailer, but there were multiple routes the plot could have taken).

The initial main hook: can Odenkirk's character write the greatest romance card ever - is answered, to some degree, but felt like a cop-out.

I was more interested in the budding romance between Odenkirk and Tamblyn than who killed a minor side-character - in fact, I could've done without that distraction altogether.

Movies should be judged on whether they achieved what they set out to portray - but I'm left confused as to what the writers had in mind here.

The paradigm has finally shifted and you won't be finding any beautiful--in a superficial surface sense--people here. They have been replaced, at last, by the talented people. Hollywood's no longer fashioned out of wood, insincere smiles, and GQish scientologists. Instead we get the great Bob Odenkirk with all of his charm and pathos. He's impossible not to like. His performance is tops here as he fights for his right to write...even if it's only greeting cards. Fine, lighthearted parallelisms are drawn to Chinatown. A touch of light & shadow noir illuminates the film. Whiplash witted one-liners slap you silly at just the right time. Not one but two actors with cleft appear -- Alex Karpovsky & Stacy Keach (it's good to see cleft-palated actors not named Joaquin Phoenix get some love; King Tut had one after all.) Slam poets get rightfully demystified as poetasters. As do novelists as writers who can't edit themselves. This is nothing if not a writer's kind of flick. Speaking, well, typing of, my only gripe is that Amber Tamblyn didn't get to read any of her highly inspired, original poetry. Really the only bummer here. If you dig Odenkirk, the written word, and a movie with a paucity of eye candy, then this one's for you.