7 Chinese Brothers

In line with Byington's others in that it's an occasionally laugh-out-loud comedy under 75 minutes, thus already worthy of admiration, but the differences were more intriguing than expected, perhaps reflective of the director's hinted-at faith. Less quippy; earthier, more "sincere". Smarmy-slacker Book of Job. Book of Jobless? isn't the Perry segment a Samaritan update for wiseass hipsters? & don't tell me there's not a moneylenders'-table vibe to turning over the big barrel of change...

Bland and inconsequential portrait of Schwartzman's slacker is (like its lead) laid back and easy to take, but a lack of edge or any meaningful conflict means its largely a bit of a snooze, livened occasionally by its support cast who do occasionally confound expectations - its nice that Pienta successfully avoids the MPDG tropes for example, though a wasted Dukakis is never asked to rise above the "barbed granny" archetype. A middling effort.

Quirky white guy in his late-20s/early-30s struggles to get his life together. He acts goofy and everyone around him is more mature. But by the end he matures. I feel like we've been getting the same movie every festival cycle for the past 20 years.

Byington's most assured and "mature" work, yet somehow to me it feels like a step backwards from Somebody Up There Likes Me in a way. As an ode to 20/30-something slackerdom there are definitely things that hit home here, but it also all feels fairly familiar, albeit certainly enjoyable for what it is. Mostly it just suffers from coming off of Listen Up Philip, which transcended these tropes by flipping them on their heads in electrifying ways (Alex Ross Perry's cameo is a telling highlight).

Great soundtrack! Admittedly the whole thing kind of feels like small potatoes and kinda inconsequential, but if you're a Jason Schwartzman fan you should definitely check this out. At the very least its only an hour and fifteen minutes so its a rather easy watch.