Café

(2010) Café DRAMA/ SCIENCE-FICTION

At the start of the movie, gunshots are being heard from an independent Café shop, and then the real story switches back starting one week earlier, starting from a Sunday. It revolves around a café joint and the people that go to it. It consists a bunch of nobody's because much of the characters doesn't seem to have anything to do with the gunshots that occurred at the beginning. Some of the characters include a person writing a book, two people meeting from a theater, except the man already has a ring on his finger, a drug addict as well as the drug seller(Jamie Kennedy). And the most bizarre one of all, something that was already been done already called "The Matrix", in which a young 10 or 12 year old girl is seen talking like an adult, telling an overweight man on a lap top that he's a made up person called an 'Avatar'. She tries to instruct him to do something, and he doesn't listen. Both Claire (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Todd (Daniel Eric Gold) are the only people who work at the Café shop, with the peculiar thing that they don't know what their boss look like. I mean, it's like how do they even get paid if they don't know what their boss even look like. Anyways, the film was written and directed by Marc Erlbaum, who may have came up the idea by watching "The Matrix" from his laptop, while drinking coffee at Starbucks.

so i decided to toss my thoughts toward this odd movie.

first i think the director is playing tricks with the viewer. by this i mean the viewer must decide for himself who or which character is real and which character is not real.

the fellow sitting at the corner table with the notebook and writing constantly in it is the key to this puzzle of people. we are seeing his imagined players or characters along with the real. he's creating a story for us but we must choose the characters to believe in.

therefore it occurred to me this is a shared visualization of the notebook writing man's solipsism. some of his characters are very real - the café employees for example. the imagined ones are the fat guy with laptop and his 'little girl guide'. i believe the troubled black guy isn't real - neither are the police. it's your choice through the entire film! i have more but i've explained myself as clearly as i can. then remember the café owner is never seen - that is what triggered my interpretation.

i do so wish the director had not included that sappy ending. i was very into the action and mystery of exactly what was happening then it's as if the director just wanted to 'wrap it up' and go home. too bad!

This is an Indie flick that I watched entirely because of its name. I sit and write in cafes, and so I figured it would appeal to me. I expected it to be quirky, and it was. What I didn't expect was for it to be quite as quirky as it is. The tagline for the film is "What if the world you lived in weren't real?" and that's basically what the film is about. The cafe's regulars go about their everyday lives and their petty dramas, every day, as do we all, but one day on the laptop of one of the regulars there appears the face of a young girl telling him that he doesn't really exist. He's just an avatar, living in a virtual world that she has created, just for the fun of creating it. Naturally, he doesn't quite believe this, but then events start happening in the cafe that cause him *to* believe it.

As such, this is a little movie that might appeal to those who tend to believe the same thing about reality, and their own lives. If you believe that someone or something else is writing the script of your life, and that you are little more than a bit player in someone or something else's drama (or comedy), this movie's for you. It's not great, and not nearly in the same league of quirky cafe-based stories as "Amelie," but it's entertaining, in a lightweight, fluffy sort of way.

If you wind up seeing it, come back and say in the comments section what you think the guy who sits in the corner every day writing in his notebook was really writing. I think it was the script for this film.

This movie is like the title...sweet. The setting and the characters add to this film. While this movie had the potential to be really good, it wasn't. It had a good message about life but it was confusing. I liked how all the characters seemed to connect but it didn't all flow together. The relationships going on in this movie were all interesting and did help make this movie bearable to watch, if it wasn't for the characters being interesting I wouldn't have watched the entire movie. I think if a few things were changed it might have made more sense. The movie was written well but just not in a way that makes sense. If you are bored on a Friday night watch this movie but if you want to watch a great movie I say you should watch something else.

If your willing to slow down the pace and go with this movie, your in for a sweet, thought provoking movie. If your an action movie goer, you may have a hard time staying engaged. Not a fault of the movie of course. The movie is based on the idea that everything in our so called reality is really an illusion. The thought provoking idea of what is real? Who created us and who pulls the strings? I once owned a café' called philosophers stone café' in which the same thought engaging ideas were tossed around with a cup of Joe everyday. Customers always said to me my café scene would make a great movie. Cafe' is close to that. Enjoy.