C.O.G.

As a David Sedaris fan, I went to see this movie kinda fearful that it would not do his essay justice. This movie far surpassed my expectations and made me laugh aloud (as reading any Sedaris piece does). This adaptation of C.O.G. was faithful to the spirit of the Sedaris essay, retaining and even adding to its understated, snarky sense of humor.

Jonathan Groff stars as David, capturing a naïve and irreverent guy fresh out of college perfectly. The film opens with a montage of him rubbing shoulders with a bunch of weirdos on a greyhound until he reaches his destination: Oregon. David plans to work on an apple farm in order to experience what "real people" do. Of course, things don't go as planned and unexpected hilarity ensues.

C.O.G. is one of the best new films that I've seen this year. The style and the soundtrack evoke an eccentric yet slightly bleak mood that I really enjoyed. I find that I relate quite heavily to the post-college feelings of uncertainty and aimlessness that David has in the film…as I'm sure many U.S. grads do.

For those who admire the writings of David Sedaris (essays and short stories - Barrel Fever, Naked (1997), Holidays on Ice (1997), Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), and When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, and Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013) and thus know that much of Sedaris's humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating, and often concerns his family life, his middle-class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, Greek heritage, being out as a gay man, jobs, education, drug use, obsessive behaviors and his life in France, London, and the English South Downs) will be pleased to see his humor translated to the screen by writer/director Kyle Patrick Alvarez. The other aspect of this at times controversial film that makes it important is the choice of casting Jonathan Groff, the gay actor who begins the television series 'Looking' this spring. The choices make the film even more enjoyable because the emphasis is not on the gay aspect but instead on the trials of coming of age and struggling with all the bulwarks society places in our way.

David (meant to be David Sedaris) is a cocky young man who graduates from Yale, yet to escape his dysfunctional family and see the world as it really is, travels to Oregon to work on an apple farm run by Hobbs (Dean Stockwell). Struggling as a non-Hispanic worker he is befriended by a driver named Curly (Corey Stoll) who picks up on David's sexual ambiguity and attempts to seal his fate. David escapes, falls under the wing Jon (Denis O'Hare), a evangelistic Christian who has a history of alcohol addition and anger management all of which he hides under the cloak of being a C.O.G. (Child of God). David joins Jon in making jade clocks in the shape of Oregon to sell at the fair. He 'sees the light' and decides to become a C.O.G. and from there the story plays out in very strange ways. Out of his element, he finds his lifestyle and notions being picked apart by everyone who crosses his path. And his final coming out realization is gently subtle.

The cast is uniformly excellent, but the major kudos go to Jonathan Groff who demonstrates his fine acting skills and magnetic screen presence. The film is after all just a story about a boy of our times. It resonates well.

Grady Harp

I knew very little about this film when I went into it except that it was inspired in some way by a David Sedaris essay. It surpassed my expectations in a beautiful and lasting way. It's extraordinarily funny - often in surprising ways. Like Sedaris' writing, things just happen, and it's the protagonist's reactions that allow the audience to enter this world of poignant meaninglessness. The characters and situations can be so absurd at times that you wonder what kind of world this is, how realistic or how exaggerated or how cinematic - but then you realize that life can really be like that... Groff does a stellar job playing with an open-minded and humorous pretentiousness. But what I thought was most impressive was Kyle Patrick Alvarez's subtly-brilliant treatment of both sexuality and religion, both of which are such matter-of-fact gray areas in the film that they leave the viewer wondering without ever asking him to. Great film - definitely catch it when it comes out.

Just saw this with a friend and ended up in the lobby of the theater discussing it with 3 other people for about 30 minutes afterward. People we'd never met.

We all agreed the film is ambiguous in every way. Uncomfortably so. The film is about a young man who is green. One is reminded of Ben from The Graduate. He appears to be a lost soul with no anchor. He reaches out to people for assistance but appears to be only mildly interested in them or what their lives are about. He tends to adopt whatever interests they have in order to remain in their employ or care. He is completely unprepared for the people he meets in his journey to find himself.

The acting is excellent by everyone. For that I give this film a high rating. I'm not sure everyone will enjoy the film but there is no denying the talent here. Just be prepared that not every character in this film is happy and full of joy. It isn't a joyful experience.

C.O.G. is my favorite David Sedaris essay, even before I moved to Oregon and recognized some of its landmarks. The movie even begins with one of my favorite speeches from the essay, although the speech is much better on the page.

The story concerns a young man who fantasizes about joining the working class (as in Grapes of Wrath) and travels to Oregon to pick apples, work in an apple sorting factory, and make jade sculptures with a temperamental man who is trying to convert him to Christianity. In the essay, Sedaris, as himself, is state school educated, a stoner, accustomed to menial jobs, and from a working class family. In the movie, David – or Samuel, as he's calling himself – is a smarmy preppy educated at Yale who is first depicted reading Darwin's Origin of Species. When Sedaris makes fun of crazy people on a Greyhound, or working class people at a factory, it is clear that he is making fun of his own expectations, as well as people not far below him in social class. This is quite a contrast to an upper class character looking down on dumb poor people. This is one of the movie's first flaws. And it colors almost everything. What is his true motivation, if he is so jaded and cynical? What is the movie trying to tell us about working people and Christians when it presents us with this character as its hero?

A second flaw is one chief among Hollywood movies, even those intended for the art-house crowd. Though David Sedaris himself, as well as the lead actor, are openly gay, this movie wouldn't want to come out and just say such a thing, why people might flee into the streets. So it teases us with making us believe he might have a female love interest; it does not tell us what the source of the conflict is with his family (it would appear to be his coming out); it doesn't tell us why he is so freaked out by a co-worker's gay advances (is it because he's grossed out by the man or the concept?), or how any of this might impact his potential conversion to Christianity. I'm sure the director has a lofty, annoying explanation for this oversight, but I can count two "so, was he gay?" posts already on the list of five that show up on the main page.

The score, mainly percussion, will be off-putting to many, especially in the first scenes on the bus. And the ending will also confuse. After personal conflicts with many of the characters, how will his opinions and his Christian conversion change? We know IRL that David Sedaris went on to a happy life as a bestselling author. A less vague ending could have shown what the character learned from these experiences, especially since this movie tried so hard to be more sincere than its comedic base.

This movie has some things going for it, but it is philosophically a disappointment.