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I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

Deadpan that just feels dead

By NICK MCCARTHY | September 12, 2007

SOMEONE TO EAT CHEESE: Even with Sarah Silverman, it's just not that funny.

Just in case any insensitive pricks forgot, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Jeff Garlin is around to remind them that fatties get picked on long after junior high. His potbelly and sheepdog face fit the self-loathing James Aaron, who manages to elicit pathos while sitting alone on the hood of his car and munching on expired Ring-Dings. Beyond this genuine sentiment, however, is a mess. Overloaded with cameos, the film proves that Garlin has good friends, yet as a writer/director adapting his one-man show, he treats them like a cheese platter; Amy Sedaris, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Kind, and Sarah Silverman are just flat extensions of their usual shtick. It’s okay that Garlin’s first feature amounts to a filmed screenplay, but the humor lacks vitality — it aims for deadpan yet just feels dead, particularly the failed metajoke concerning a remake of Paddy Chayevsky’s Marty. There’s just no meat on this one.

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ARTICLES BY NICK MCCARTHY

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Although Kim has her pulse on religious, racial, and social conflict, she relies too much on contrived plotting.

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Claude Lelouch is a fabulous fibber.

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Six sightless Tibetan students take a demanding field trip toward equality via Lhakpa Ri, a 23,000-foot peak on the north side of Everest. Blindsight, however, impedes more than it inspires.

GRACE IS GONE | January 23, 2008
It’s strange that a film whose young characters are told to question the media should rely on its score to dictate how you’ll feel.

MILAREPA: MAGICIAN, MURDERER, SAINT | October 03, 2007
All mountains, monks, and a soundtrack of wailing women, Neten Chokling’s film opens with the announcement of a birth.