The Marc Pease Experience (2009) - Review

This is a weird little movie.  Kind of one of those movies that you forget about as soon as you finish watching.  It's not that it's bad, exactly.  Heck, it's actually pretty entertaining.  But, despite the great cast, it really has no staying power.  Not really that much of an experience, I suppose.

Well, first the pros:  Jason Schwartzman is a likable lead.  His character is childish and dumb, but the actor is funny enough that he makes it work.  Ben Stiller is one of those guys that I could watch in anything, and he delightfully hams it up as the villain.  And Anna Kendrick... is actually pretty good too, despite what many people who only saw her in Twilight may think.

So the cast is good.  As for the rest, it's pretty forgettable.  The biggest problem with this movie is that I can't really tell you what genre it's supposed to be.  Sometimes that's a great thing.  I mean, not being able to pigeonhole a film into a genre is good (see: Donnie Darko, Back to the Future, Super, etc.), but here it feels like the reason is more because of bad writing than multi-genre shenanigans.  I suppose it's meant to be a comedy, but there are few laughs.  And it's not really a drama because there's very little dramatic investment.  There's quite a bit of music (at least the movie revolves around it) but it's not a musical.  It's a sad little movie without a genre.  Worth a watch if you catch it on though.  Not bad, just don't expect much.