Directed by: Brian Hecker
Written by: Brian Hecker
Cast: William H. Macy, Cheryl Hines, Steven Kaplan, Alia Shawkat
out of 5 stars

Without the hilariously crude humor of “Superbad” and the off-kilter attitude of “Juno,” writer/director Brian Hecker’s “Bart Got a Room” hails from the safe side of teenage coming-of-agers. While the film’s sex-talk and set-ups are run-of-the-mill, there’s a great deal of heart in the areas of father-son dynamics and all-around togetherness, where most teen comedies don’t much tread. “Bart Got a Room” is the Jewish kid’s version of “Superbad,” taking place in a largely Jewish community in Florida, peopled by retirees and upper middle-class families, where the nebbish Danny (Steven Kaplan, sort of a doppelganger to “Superbad’s” Michael Cera, nervous dithering, awkward stammering, and all) wants to wrap up his high-school career with the perfect Prom night.

Danny’s parents, meanwhile, are dealing with life post-divorce, as they plunge into the murky waters of dating. It’s a rocky road for Danny’s father, Ernie (William H. Macy, sporting a dynamite Jew-fro), whose dedication to his son outweighs his blundering attempts to make a love connection, while Danny’s mother Beth (Cheryl Hines) is having moderate luck in her courtship with “financially secure” Bob (Jon Polito). The natural choice for a Prom date is Camille (Alia Shawkat), his spunky, like-minded best friend. But Danny refuses to settle for the ready-made option and, instead, egged on by his Prom-obsessed pals, trains his sights on a string of potential females, with varyingly amusing strikeouts. Becker doesn’t offer fresh ideas in boy-girl dynamics, and even treads in racial clichés when, at one point, Danny hangs out with a traditionally Asian classmate (read: gongs on the soundtrack, and protective plastic covering the furniture). It’s not offensive, only stale, yet Danny is so genuine, so pure in his pursuit, that we willingly ride over these potholes in the script.

William H. Macy owns this film, compensating for the general lack of freshness in the material and the all-too-familiar wry tone to Hecker’s scenes. Ernie may be a somewhat inept dad, who stumbled as a husband, and bungles along now as a bachelor playing the field. But he’s all heart. Macy’s one of today’s great American character actors — unafraid to go to whatever lengths in fully realizing his characters — and he’s the main attraction here — sad and hilarious, at once, and that’s a difficult trick to pull off. All else in the cast are solid, with Kaplan’s Danny coming off a tad too familiar. “Bart Got a Room” could’ve been the Prom King of teen comedies this year, but Hecker’s script, finally, can’t decide how irreverent it wants to be, and settles for a neither-here-nor-there attitude that, luckily, scores with a few genuine laughs.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under Tribeca 2008, Reviews, Look! New!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.