| Full Grown Men |
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Two old friends with distinctly different personalities, trying to reconnect on a cross-state road trip, along the way encountering bizarre characters that help the pair discover deeper truths about themselves. Didn't that star Paul Giamatti?
The theme here is that the childhood you remember isn't necessarily great as you remember it, and it's one that Munro undoubtedly believes more thirtysomething men should take to heart. Alby, after being thrown out by his wife, calls up Elias, his best friend (and punching bag) from his school days, and asks him if he's ever wished he could just be a kid again."Maybe if I were a different kid," Elias replies. The two leads are well-matched, with McGrath somehow effective as a strange Keanu Reeves/Jim Carrey hybrid, and Friedlander's Elias as a dork who's grown up surprisingly well-adjusted. The biggest laughs come from Alan Cumming (Sweet Land) as a psychotic hitchhiker, a stock role of road-trip movies that in Cumming's hands, still manages to delight. Deborah Harry's character, an over-the-hill performing mermaid, however, seems tacked on. A scene of Alby being thrown out of a bar and roughed up by midgets falls flat because it isn't explained. Plus, Alby doesn't earn any sympathy points for traumatizing a van full of special-ed children (though he attempts to redeem himself later by bonding with Rollie, played delightfully odd newcomer Benjamin Karpf.) Alby's attempt to win back his wife and son feels unresolved because not enough time is spent on it (a voice-over at the end is too little, too late). Luckily, the film's heart is right where it should be – with Alby and Elias, and like that other two-guys-on-a-trip film, it's (like a child's imagination) fertile territory. -Claire L. Shefchik
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