{"id":12099,"date":"2017-06-15T20:04:19","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T01:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=12099"},"modified":"2017-06-15T20:04:44","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T01:04:44","slug":"somebody-up-there-likes-me-2012-bob-byington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/12099","title":{"rendered":"Somebody Up There Likes Me (2012, Bob Byington)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was finally bullied into watching this by the poster in the Ross front entry… Byington must have visited when this opened (before I moved to town). Story of Max (who carries a magic macguffin suitcase) and friends, jumping forward 5 years every 20 minutes (though the actors barely age). The movie plays like a deadpan, vaguely absurd stand-up comedy act – a funny one, but it’s hard to tell if we’re meant to have any affection for these characters.<\/p>\n

Max and Kate:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Max is Keith Poulson (Hermia & Helena<\/em>, Little Sister<\/em>) who befriends coworker Nick Offerman and marries coworker Jess Weixler (a Rigby in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby<\/em>). As time goes on, Offerman ends up with Weixler and first Max then his son will date the babysitter Stephanie Hunt. Characters are unceremoniously killed – Weixler’s dad’s post-cancer-diagnosis suicide is played for laughs, and Max, now rich from running a pizza and ice cream franchise with Offerman, has a heart attack while racing a breadstick thief in the cemetery.<\/p>\n

Max and Jess:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

The director, lead actor, and Max’s ex Kate Lyn Sheil are all Alex Ross Perry associates. Byington’s followup starred Jason Schwartzman and Tunde Adebimpe and I have heard nothing about it. His latest premiered a few months ago at SXSW and I have heard nothing about it either.<\/p>\n

My favorite visual joke: wedding singer with a four-man band who all look like the same guy. Are those all the same guy??<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Rizov liked it roughly as much as I did:<\/p>\n

What it basically comes down to is that I find Byington’s comic fixations \u2014 rudeness and morbidity \u2014 funny and compelling … It’s smart and sad about death, and the stupid decisions casually made on a day-to-day basis by adrift 20\/30somethings who think marriage will give them the stability and rigor they lack otherwise. “You never know what’s good for you,” Offerman says, and he’s right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

D’Angelo hated its guts:<\/p>\n

[Max] just drifts through life, responding to decades of minor turmoil with the same vaguely bored sneer … there’s no indication here that Byington’s characters, or Byington himself, gives even half a shit about anything at all. Somebody Up There Likes Me<\/em> seems smugly pleased with its own detachment, a quality underlined by the cutesy-ironic score contributed by Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio. (Hope you like tubas.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was finally bullied into watching this by the poster in the Ross front entry… Byington must have visited when this opened (before I moved to town). Story of Max (who carries a magic macguffin suitcase) and friends, jumping forward 5 years every 20 minutes (though the actors barely age). The movie plays like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1049,2295,2296,2284,251,267],"class_list":["post-12099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2010s","tag-bob-byington","tag-kate-lyn-sheil","tag-lnkarno","tag-starts-at-the-end","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12149,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12099\/revisions\/12149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}