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The Puffy Chair

Kooky road movie about an old Lazyboy

By PETER KEOUGH | May 31, 2006

3.0 Stars

The Puffy Chair

Played by co-screenwriter Mark Duplass, brother of The Puffy Chair’s director Jay, Josh is kind of a light-weight Vince Vaughn character, maybe crossed a bit with Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin from The Graduate. In short, he’s going nowhere, except maybe down. His band has folded, his new career as a booking agent is turning him into a monster, and his girlfriend Emily (Kathryn Aselton) is losing patience. So he goes on an odyssey of sorts, driving from New York down South to pick up the 1985 purple Lazyboy of the title, and then delivering it to his old man in Atlanta as a birthday present. His dad had a chair just like it, and Josh is nostalgic. Not part of the plan is having Emily and his flaky brother Rhett tag along, making for loopily dysfunctional discussions and offbeat misadventures along the way. The Duplass brothers know their way around a kooky, loosely wrapped scene, but, as the film’s conclusion demonstrates, they can cut to the heart as well.

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