Directed by Brett Haley (2018)
by Francis Friel, The Projectionist

I feel like I should start out by saying I like Brett Haley. I spend a lot of time, both in my writing and in person with people who put up with my endless movie rants, bemoaning the current Nice Movie Scare cinema is going through. And while it’s true that there have always been Nice Movies made for Nice People, it seems like the Hollywood landscape is scrambling right now to throw these things together and ship them into theaters as fast as possible. I guess we don’t have musicals anymore to take people’s minds off the fact that we’re literally about five seconds away from a Dr. Strangelove scenario every moment of every day (and no, Damien Chazelle doesn’t count because he’s a fucking sociopath who shouldn’t be allowed within five hundred feet of a film set - more on him later, if you can believe it). So we have these light Nice Comedies for Nice People to watch. But it’s true, Brett Haley actually stands out from the pack by pure virtue of him seeming to enjoy making films and have genuine empathy and respect for his own stories and characters. He’s not cynical in his filmmaking, something surprisingly rare for people in his position. His I’ll See You In My Dreams and The Hero, while both suffering from an almost unbearable Niceness, both had their hearts in the right place. The easiest contrast to this would be my vote for Worst Picture of 2017, Lake Bell’s I Do…Until I Don’t, another film from a director I like that nonetheless drowned in its own cuteness to the point where I couldn’t tell whether or not she was fucking with me. Never a good sign.