Such a frustrating disappointment

How sad is this?

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Curtis Prentiss (Billy Crudup) has a new idea for an invention. He enlists the help of his friend Kenny Owenby (David Hornsby) who owns a mattress store. Mandy Riddle (Kristen Wiig) works at the store. Rick Honeycutt (Paul Giamatti) is an unemployed rocket scientist. The invention is a rocket belt but Curtis has no technical knowledge and no money.Billy Crudup is wrong for a wacky indie comedy lead. He is not at all funny. It should be much more of a dark comedy early on. Paul Giamatti is fine as a foil to a funnier character and he's also fine in a black comedy. Hornsby does his normal thing. Kristen Wiig is hilarious when she actually gets lines. In general, there are not enough funny jokes and Crudup is not the best one to deliver them anyways. It's a weak attempt at writing and directing from Paul Schneider who is usually an actor. Actually he could have played Curtis a little bit better than Crudup. The last third turns into something darker which isn't set up in the first part of the movie. I can see what this is attempting but it doesn't work.

Lots of quirky characters! Even before the film starts, we are told what the film is about on a couple title cards. That was a little disappointing, since I like to experience the film as it unfolds, without knowing details ahead of time, I wish they had saved the title cards for the end of the film. Ah well.Billy Crudup is Curtis Prentiss, a scientist with a dream, some eccentric traits, and a schematic for a new invention. He takes on Rick (Paul Giamatti) to help develop the product. Giamatti is also the producer of the film. We seem to spend a lot of time watching Rick and his wife in their odd marriage, so that must be important. Ken Owenby (David Hornsby) is yet another quirky member of the team – he's a high talker, with a silly little barky dog, and hugs a lot.Pretty good film, but they could have shown a few less scenes of Prentiss' annoying habits…..or maybe at least show some cool, science-y stuff for those of us who dig that. Maybe show what things worked and what didn't. They kind of go right to a successful demonstration without showing us the failures of their invention. They also spend a LOT of time on how Prentiss is a crummy boss and has trouble interacting with others. The conflict between Prentiss and Rick grows to a showdown between them, but at the end of the film, we aren't sure what the actual resolution was. When this is for "artistic reasons", I understand it, but here, I think some major plot scenes were chopped off for this shorter DVD version. Frustrating. Written and directed by Paul Schneider. The entry on IMDb shows 120 minutes, but the DVD itself is 98 minutes, as it states on the DVD back cover. I will update IMDb to include this DVD version length.

First, a general impression the film was mucked around with in editing. Maybe it was a scripting problem. I've seen this in the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" which was pared down and pared down. Unfortunately it cut deeply into the bone. Same thing for the "Solaris" remake.Kristen Wiig disappears. Her arc never really starts and there is no closure.The abrupt ending leads to an unsatisfied feeling.Some bad guys are introduced but never fleshed and only partially explained. One has a single scene and is never heard from again.Though marketed as a comedy (and it initially veers that way), it becomes deadly serious. The tonal shift jars and detracts.And I just wanted more.That said, I enjoyed the film. Giammati is always a joy as is Cruddup.At the root it's a character study: the volatile, paranoid and violent Rocket Scientist Giammati has a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas; Cruddup's overcompensating, delusional, near con man/President reeks of failure; Kenny, the unquestioning money man, is the poster child for ineffectual and weak.These three misfits conspire to create a rocket belt introduced by Cruddup who spools the scene from "Thunderball" in which Bond escapes via Bell Jet Pack.Off and running on Kenny's money, the trio do create the belt. After a successful test, paranoia and distrust creeps into their relationship.The dream Cruddup sold the others disappears - figuratively and literally.Worth a look. Certainly better than the average brain dead fare, but may disappoint as it's a glimpse of how brilliant it could have been. A near miss of a near miss.Read the source book instead.

This is another quirky independent film, this one about a pair of business-oriented dreamers who are all attitude and no substance. The great idea is a working rocket belt, something neither of them know anything about. What they have instead is an abundance of business models, motivational pep talks and winning slogans.For the actual rocket belt they succeed in hiring an actual unemployed rocket scientist who begins to develop a prototype. Much of the humor is Gogolesque, treading a fine line between absurdity and apparent success. They are successful in raising money from dreamers like themselves. There is a broad satirical implication that "the money people" are a class apart requiring to be spoon fed a certain business formula unrelated to reality. Nevertheless, the project is satisfyingly rejected by the big-time investors, summarily dismissing it as needing "more science". The film is thus very amusing from the outset and I was prepared for more amusing developments. But the story takes some unfunny turns. The rocket belt becomes the focus of in-fighting which is carried almost to the point of bloodshed. This turn of plot probably because it is based on a true story.The film turns into one focusing on male bonding or the lack of it. The two original entrepreneurs are best friends with a bond that supersedes anything, including reason. The third partner, the rocket scientist, engages with the two to gain recognition, but in the long run the original promoter is implacable. At issue is the prototype rocket belt itself which he has hidden. You aren't supposed to ask the seemingly reasonable question why the scientist, who is the only one who knows how the thing works, doesn't just build a second prototype--maybe this time one capable of better than the 30 seconds flight time.So much is this an all-male film that what might otherwise have been a romance developing between the original promoter and Kirsten Wiig's character is simply dropped, as if for lack of interest. It all adds up to a flick which starts out very funny and is worth watching to the end, but with a little let-down so far as humor is concerned.