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Moriarty's DVD Shelf! PUFFY CHAIR Review!
Here’s one I wasn’t expecting.
First things first, it’s a terrible title. I get why someone might have thought it was clever or a fun way to title the film, but it doesn’t work. The film’s better than that title, better than just “clever.” It’s one of the most confident comedic debuts by a director since BOTTLE ROCKET, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that I got the same effervescent rush off of PUFFY CHAIR as I did off that first Wes Anderson film. This is an accomplished first film, and it doesn’t surprise me to learn that director Jay Duplass has been making short films with his brother Mark Duplass, who wrote the film and who also stars in it, for quite some time. They’ve got a clear voice in this movie, and that’s something that only happens as a filmmaker gains experience. This movie feels to me like something they’ve been itching to make for a while, a real calling card. All they’ve done so far is stake their flag, announce their intentions. And in doing so, they set their own personal bar fairly high.
THE PUFFY CHAIR is a road trip movie. You know... like LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Or SIDEWAYS. Or about a bajillion other movies, those just being two recent well-liked examples of the genre. Here, it’s all about Josh (Mark Duplass), a twenty-something guy who reminds me of a mix between Ron Livingston in ADAPTATION and Jim from the American version of THE OFFICE. He’s pretty tightly wound, and that’s no doubt due in part to having to deal with Emily (Kathryn Aselton), his little yappy Chihuahua of a girlfriend. She’s cute. Most of the time. But she’s also really clingy and needy and perhaps too intentionally perky. Most of the time. And Josh puts up with it because of the obvious benefits. He gets an idea when he sees an online listing for an easy chair that reminds him of the overstuffed monstrosity that his dad had when he was young. He decides to buy it for his father and use the occasion as an excuse to drive to pick it up, then drive it all the way to Atlanta in time for his father’s birthday. It’s a good plan. But when you add Rhett (Rhett Wilkins), Josh’s eccentric and unpredictable brother, into the mix and Emily decides to invite herself along for some quality Josh-time, things start to complicate themselves.
There’s a low-key comic energy to the film, but things are played real at every turn. That way, if Duplass wants to turn up the comedy, it’s easy, and if he wants to turn up the emotion, it’s always simmering. Josh’s temper is a real issue in the film, as is Rhett’s bizarre luck as he drifts through life, and nothing’s written for cheap laughs. The film’s shot in a pseudo-documentary style, but it works for the movie. Everything’s underplayed to just the right degree. All the people they encounter on their trip feel like real people in real small towns. There’s not a typical actor’s face in the film, not even the leads. Aselton and Mark Duplass have worked together before in some of the short films, and they have a very solid, very real chemistry together as a result. Rhett Wilkins is the wild card here, and he’s got a sweet, Reverend Jim Ignitowski vibe to him, blissed out and eternally open to opportunity. He is a great foil for both Aselton and Mark Duplass. There’s a strong indie rock soundtrack on the film, and they always feel like emotionally accurate choices instead of marketing friendly choices.
This is a little movie, but it’s worth your time to track it down. Honest, without pretension, expertly crafted, THE PUFFY CHAIR is the sort of film that gives indie cinema a good name.
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Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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for the second time...
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and as one talkbacker once mentioned: i thought it would feel somehow different...but anyway. FIRST!!
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Had to do it
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Bored at work
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Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!
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Well it is... I'll check it out.
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I heard this movie went to Sundance last year, but I guess it went under anyone's radar even then. That said, Shawn Levy of The Oregonian made a point to highlight it, and it did come out here in Portland in June. I should slap myself for missing the opportunity to see it then.
Thanks for the reminder! I'll be sure to pick this one up. -
I heard the buzz on this and grabbed it from Netflix. I don't know what film you watched but the one I saw was just awful. Terrible acting, unlikable characters, and a story that moves at a glacial pace, is heavily padded, and attempts to be pithy and profound but really ends up being about nothing. [Spoiler] Basically the "story" is about a loser who takes his girlfriend with him on a road trip to pick up a chair for his estranged father's birthday. Along the way they get stuck with the loser's hippie-jerk brother. After aquiring the chair hippie-jerk has an "issue" with the chair and destroys it. Meanwhile the loser dumps his girlfriend in the final moment of the film. What's it all mean? What's the significance? Nothing.
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I'm wavering with this now as your description sounds a lot like it...
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I'll take your word that this done and not bother seeing it. I'm really sick of "indy" movies about losers in functionally disfunctional family relationships. Especially when they're set around Thanksgiving or Christmas. Maybe these movies capture some sort of American reality about families where everybody is mental and disaffected and they've all gone their separate ways and when they try to function together they end up hurting each other, but in the end learn to appreciate each other's love blah blah blah, but maybe because I'm not an American I never relate to movies like Royal Tennenbaums, Junebug, Broken Flowers.
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Anything anti-corporate will turn profit!
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I LOVE Royal Tennenbaums, LMS was fairly good, Junebug was average or just above, Broken Flowers pissed me off something terrible. So IMO there is a range. I never had a disfunctional family, but I usually get something out of them (I hope for entertainment as a minimum, then it always helps to have some plot, acting and direction). Peace.
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Feb 02, 2007 9:26:07 AM CST
Woah .... Agreeing with most BUT, some of the road ....
by kinghenryviii
movies / disfunctional fam indie comedies - i had high expecations but they just didn't pay off. The disfunctional family jive is good to a point but it's slowly being over done. Little Miss Sunshine - liked it, wanted to love it but was a bit let down. Broken Flowers did, in fact, piss me off. Murray could have atleast broken a smile - it didn't have to be that depressing. And the ending .... very glad I didn't slap down $10 to see it when it was out (I still own it though so what do I know)Over all, I think Sideways is hands down best comedy road trip indie. And it's been said, that now all American families are labled disfuntional (most anyway), mine included, but some of these family flicks just strecth the scope toooo wide. Charaters are becoming cartoons in them selves. Wouldn't be so bad to have more road movies like Train, Planes, and Automobiles - everyone in that flick was disfunctional and had maybe 30 seconds of whining. Worked for me.
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I think what really annoyed me was that ithad potential to actually be good. The only thing that got in the way was the treakle slow plot, Bill swaning around being 'Emo', and that ending. Shit! Now I'm angry again... I only saw Sideways once but quite liked it. It had more realistic performances, characters and situations than is the case with more recent attempts.
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I definately agree that Broken Flowers had more potential and had frustratingly meaningless ending. I'm just saying that I don't relate to these movies, even though I spent a lot of time in America and spent Thanksgiving with some Americans it was a pretty pleasant experience and at worst just kinda dull chit chat with a bunch of relatives that don't have much in common catching up. I was never around any American family where one person was a paranoid, another a manic depressive, another a drug addict, and another a wild child offensive artist while another is an anal conservative etc. etc while everybody shares the same broken feeling of despair.Are a lot American families really like this? They really didn't seem it from my experience. Maybe this is just how the sensitive artist types see their families and that's why these kinds of movies come out more often than movies where teenagers get chased around the woods by a knife-wielding maniac. Either way, I'm kinda done with this type of movie for a while. And indie film makers should learn that making these disfuncitonal family movies is no longer a clever calling card to get people interested in you as a film maker.
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correction!
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From what you guys say I'll be skipping it. Take my word for it, Puffy Chair is garbage. Seriously, NOTHING happens. I rented it based on a positive review on another site. I'm not sure why people are giving this a "pass" because it's truly awful. "Indy" does not necessarily mean "quality".
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Movies that are too subtle tend to make people say shit like, "Nothing happened." I'm still interested in Puffy Chair because not one, but two, of my favorite critics went ahead and gave it the golden penis award, the highest and most amazing honor in showbiz.
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this review is right on the money. i picked this up for some reason at a vid store the other night and it really impressed me. the dialouge is about as loose and real as i've heard in a film that wasn't a doc. and there is a certain energy to the film that persists throughout. also, although the film does have a hip indie soundtrack the music doesn't just come in out of nowhere like the garden state. it usually starts from someplace like a boombox or the car stereo and then kind of fades into the film. the duplass brothers are obviously going for a more realistic approach here and i think the acting is spot on. i'm a touring indie musician and the characters of josh and rhett are really believable. i've met people just like them. i really think this film should be given a chance. it's absolutely the best low-low budget film i've seen since primer.
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Puff Harder
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I saw The Puffy Chair. It was trying real hard to be witty ,smart and INDIE. While I did enjoy some of the small moments in the film I ended up disappointed in the over all effort. I actually had pretty high expectations before seeing this movie due to all the positive reviews I read and not to mention the twits at Netflix recommended I see the movie.
Its not awful but I would not even come close to giving it the glowing review Mori did. Oh yeah and Where the hell is the GYMKATA dvd review. -
Oooooo...who is this reviewer...? That movie suh-suh-suh-UCKKKED. THe main guy was fine, his brother was charming, albeit a terrible actor, the GIRLFRIEND was a fucking nightmare. I wonder (and shudder to think) if I was like that when I was younger. What a NAG. The only good thing about it was when the main guy saw the chair that he purchased was all sorts of busted up and he confronted the seller. "...and youre serious. AND youre serious." My friends and I still use that one.
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The storyteller has an obligation to the listener to tell a story with a interesting ending. At the end of Broken Flowers was nothing. So, I watched the "making of" feature and it was obvious the director didn't have an ending or direction for the story. Lame.
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I'm skipping this and renting The Day Trippers again.
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Bottle Rocket was pretentious as all get out and so fucking try-hard quirky for quirky's sake. And I LIKE his other films. That one sucked though. It's such an obvious 'indy darling'. I gotta admit that I haven't watched those Zach Braff films yet because they also look 'quirky-er than thou'.
Although I'm with you Shiza on the 'nothing happened' mentality (or lack thereof). Kids these days... -
I thought it started out well, then got too mopey and lost its flavor in the third act. And I know it was ultra-low-budget but the cinematography could be so painful.
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Please. There's a difference between an intelligent film with little plot and a film that has a lack of momentum and absolutely NOTHING to say. To dismiss the "nothing happened" opinion as mere ignorance is ignorant and pretentious. I dare poeple to watch this film and not be distracted by the terrible acting,the unlikable characters, the ugly settings, the lack of story, and most importantly, the pointlessness of it all. For those who enjoyed this film please explain the point? You shouldn't stay in a relationship when your girlfriend is totally annoying? You should allow your totally loser brother to do really annoying things without challenging him? You should make more of an effort to re-connect with your parents? This film is about as profound and original as an Archie Double Digest.
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I agree with tradazone. I've enjoyed plenty of movies with small plots and understated tones but I think a lot of indie movies hide behind plotlessness and ambiguity so that nobody will give them completely bad reviews.BTW, everybody kept saying to me that in the Miami Vice movie "nothing happened". When I saw it I couldn't understand why I heard that criticism so much. I could understand people disliking the tone or the acting or something but to say "nothing happened" is the type of attack that usually befalls indie dramas and not copper action flicks.
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Hey Trazadone. Apologies as you don't seem to be one of the brainless twerps that regularly come here and say outrageous things like "2001 sucked. It was fucking boring" because they can't fucking sit still long enough to put their brains into gear (as they're distracted waiting for their bloody mobile to go off). I grew up in the age of video recorders too but you don't see me talking through the whole thing like I can rewind the film at any time. ANYWAY when I read your first post with "Take my word for it, Puffy Chair is garbage. Seriously, NOTHING happens." it sounded so like those little punks (though you didn't follow seriously with 'dude') I jumped to the obvious conclusion which is why I agreed with Shiza. Your next post cleared things up though. So fair enough, this is me saying sorry.
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I can understand your initial reaction to my post, which did sound a bit obnoxious. I was ready to embrace Puffy Chair after reading a number of positive reviews for it. As the film unfolded, however, I was increasingly disappointed with it's non-direction. It ended up feeling very amaturish. It also didn't help that I had just seen Notes on a Scandal, which I thought was excellent.
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Dude, this is how shit like Kevin Smith's career gets started: Oh it's brilliant because he did it for no money. Sometimes a stink is just a stink.
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