[DVD Review (R2)] NUMB
I’m a big fan of Matthew Perry as an actor. He was the strongest component, in my opinion, on “the biggest sitcom of all time” (the biggest? Really?) and not only is it frustrating to see him never get the big screen shot he deserves, but the failure of his last TV venture, the criminally under-appreciated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (which he was the absolute highlight of!) is the main reason I harbour a grudge against you Americans. In a land where that diabolic Anne Heche series about men in trees or whatever can get multiple seasons, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was killed unnecessarily. I can forgive you for giving George W. Bush a second term (well, almost forgive you!), I can push to ignore the fact that you inexplicably put movies like Meet The Spartans in the number one spot at your box office, but I cannot let your ignorance of Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing follow-up slide!
Perry is up front and in the lead of Numb, a low-key indie romantic dramedy directed and written by the guy that scribed Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo, but please don’t let that put you off. Honestly. Just keep your eye on the cast (Perry, Kevin Pollack, Mary Steenburgen, Bob Gunton etc.), take my word and give the flick a try.
Screenwriter Hudson Milbank (Perry) suffers from acute depersonalization disorder. So alienated from his own life is he that he spends his days living alone in a self-described “shack”, watching The Golf Channel all day, unable to hang on to a relationship of any kind with anyone, shoplifting in order to get his adrenalin up off the floor, believing that thinking about his dad’s death will bring it to pass and loathing his mother. Obsessed with the underlying sadness that infuses his wretched existence, much to the chagrin of his screenwriting partner (Pollack) Hudson is a man in hell and therapy with a variety of different shrinks (Steenburgen and Gunton) is not helping. Then Hudson comes to think that his long catalog of dismally unsatisfying and mutually self-destructive relationships is over when Sara (Lynn Collins) stumbles into his life. He thinks she can save him. She thinks he has to save himself. Together its quite possible they can save each other.
I have Wyverex to thank for Numb coming into my viewing stratosphere. I saw a trailer for this a while back and put it on my ‘radar’. It then disappeared and was refused a UK cinema release. When I heard it was coming to DVD, I went out in search of it and it frustrated the hell out of me to find that online copies were initially severely over-priced and local stores only had it for “Special Order”. Blockbuster - who have 30 copies of that horrific Meet The Spartans movie - didn’t have this in stock until THREE WEEKS after its release and, even then, they only stocked one copy. This is just another frustrating example of the way the industry is behaving with regards to making the “little movies” readily available to the “old fashioned cineastes” like myself, who don’t have online renting facilities, and still enjoy the “hunt” for titles the retro-way (as infuriating as that can be these days!). Luckily, my boy Wyv heard of my frustrations and made sure a copy got to me. I thanked him greatly for his kindness then and I thank him even more now that I have encountered the film.
Numb is a lovely little movie. It looks as cheap and cheerful as a low budget indie movie tends to but it is anchored by an ensemble of really splendid performances; Perry and Collins lead the way, portraying their roles with great heart and humour and they’re backed by a talented supporting cast. Mary Steenburgen, who just keeps getting sexier and sexier with age, is fast becoming a really rather brilliant comedienne to rival Catherine O’ Hara. Her dead-pannery on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm brought her comedic skills to my attention, as did her work on the new Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers (which I caught at an exclusive screening just this morning) but she is absolutely fantastic in this movie. Her scenes aren’t massive in number but they’ll be what you walk away from this film talking about.
The film is no classic. It’s not going to appear on any end of year “Best of” lists but it’s a real under-rated little gem that, in an age when we’re being “told” that What Happens In Vegas and 27 Dresses are the “high standard” of the romantic comedy genre (without a single stroke of originality in either of their running times), deserves your attention way more then those aforementioned films.
The music is a little weak, the likes of Kevin Pollack and Bob Gunton struggle to expand their roles to a larger size then we need and it struggles to maintain focus on its story towards the end and tentatively dances around the cliches expectant of the atypical “romantic comedy” but whatever flaws it contains, the performances just keep driving the movie on.
I hope this film breaks out via word-of-mouth and Matthew Perry starts getting the attention and career opportunities he deserves. I hope that you give it a try too.
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