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Don’t Think Twice - A completely enjoyable indie film
Having seen most of what is currently popular and not being all that interested in Suicide Squad, we decided to take in something relatively obscure, a new movie written, directed and starred in by Michael Birbiglia, who is mainly known for acting in some TV episodes. I think you can be forgiven if you have not heard of him…I hadn’t. Don’t Think Twice was playing at our local indie/foreign film mecca and when we looked, surprisingly, it showed up as an exalted 99% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It stars Birbiglia as Miles, Keegan-Micheal Kay as Jack and Gillian Jacobs as Samantha. Among the cast members, the only one I was familiar with was Jacobs, who was previously featured in the witty TV show Community. It’s an extremely low budget film, shot in tiny corners of New York. The rest of the cast is completely unknown to me.
The story centers around an improv comedy group that calls itself The Commune. They have been performing together for a long time in small venues in the City, but to their dismay, they find out that their usual gig, a small Village comedy club, is going to close. In spite of all their years of performing, the members of The Commune still live like they just graduated, came to the big city and are looking for a break. Miles, the group leader, lives in a space so small that his bed looks like a bookshelf. Sadly, for most of them, they’ve been looking for that break for a long time now and there isn’t much future for The Commune when the club closes. The “Holy Grail” for these performers is to land a job on the long-running TV show Weekend Live, a very thinly veiled version of Saturday Night Live. Ironically, they are improv comedians, striving to get on a show where improv is not done. The long-running ecosystem of The Commune is disrupted, however, when two members, Jack and Samantha are invited to audition for Weekend Live. Samantha backs out, but Jack lands a job. All of a sudden Jack is going big-time and the rest of the group is losing their venue. Relationships in The Commune (especially Jack and Samantha’s romance) get complicated as these characters try to come to grips with the fact that they are floundering while Jack is about to take the big step that they all secretly envy. Realizing that youthful aspirations are not being fulfilled and wondering how Jack’s possible success will effect the group becomes the main theme of the story. As one character, who reminds me of Woody Allen, puts it, “your 20’s are all about hope, your 30’s are all about how dumb it was to hope”.
Don’t Think Twice was shot in the second half of 2015 and opened in New York just a few weeks ago. Word has spread quickly in the indie community and the film has been well received. I went, not knowing anything except for the single paragraph in the theater’s evening schedule. My experience with movies like this is mixed. Sometimes they seem pretentious about their low-budget moral purity, but in the case of Don’t Think Twice, that never happens. I don’t know anything about Birbiglia, don’t know if there’s any autobiographical element to the story and don’t know how the movie germinated, but that doesn’t really matter because the movie becomes a believable story about approaching middle age, the realization that not all dreams come true and the difficulties of trying to deal with a friend who is now more successful than anybody else in the group, but who is still the same person they knew before.
Don’t Think Twice has already been a relatively big hit in New York, where it is set, and was referred to in Metacritic with the term “universal acclaim”. I really enjoyed it. The cast works, like The Commune, as an ensemble; acting is completely realistic, not movie-contrived. The minimal production and grainy cinematography doesn’t detract; in fact, it gives the movie a realistic look that seems almost voyeuristic. A bigger production would have detracted rather than improved the film. When I recently reviewed the new Ghostbusters movie, I recall remarking that, unlike the old one, it tried but failed at being a buddy movie or a New York Movie, in spite of trying for both. Don’t Think Twice succeeds at both. If you’re not sure about seeing something so little with nothing approaching a superhero, just lie yourself for a few minutes that this is a French movie from the 1950’s that’s a verifiable classic of the cinema. After those few minutes, you will be absorbed. I’m assuming that DTT will be circulating around the festivals and showing at big-city indie theaters for a while and that it probably won’t be showing up in suburban cineplexes, but if you get the chance and can have an open mind, don’t miss it.
Having seen most of what is currently popular and not being all that interested in Suicide Squad, we decided to take in something relatively obscure, a new movie written, directed and starred in by Michael Birbiglia, who is mainly known for acting in some TV episodes. I think you can be forgiven if you have not heard of him…I hadn’t. Don’t Think Twice was playing at our local indie/foreign film mecca and when we looked, surprisingly, it showed up as an exalted 99% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It stars Birbiglia as Miles, Keegan-Micheal Kay as Jack and Gillian Jacobs as Samantha. Among the cast members, the only one I was familiar with was Jacobs, who was previously featured in the witty TV show Community. It’s an extremely low budget film, shot in tiny corners of New York. The rest of the cast is completely unknown to me.
The story centers around an improv comedy group that calls itself The Commune. They have been performing together for a long time in small venues in the City, but to their dismay, they find out that their usual gig, a small Village comedy club, is going to close. In spite of all their years of performing, the members of The Commune still live like they just graduated, came to the big city and are looking for a break. Miles, the group leader, lives in a space so small that his bed looks like a bookshelf. Sadly, for most of them, they’ve been looking for that break for a long time now and there isn’t much future for The Commune when the club closes. The “Holy Grail” for these performers is to land a job on the long-running TV show Weekend Live, a very thinly veiled version of Saturday Night Live. Ironically, they are improv comedians, striving to get on a show where improv is not done. The long-running ecosystem of The Commune is disrupted, however, when two members, Jack and Samantha are invited to audition for Weekend Live. Samantha backs out, but Jack lands a job. All of a sudden Jack is going big-time and the rest of the group is losing their venue. Relationships in The Commune (especially Jack and Samantha’s romance) get complicated as these characters try to come to grips with the fact that they are floundering while Jack is about to take the big step that they all secretly envy. Realizing that youthful aspirations are not being fulfilled and wondering how Jack’s possible success will effect the group becomes the main theme of the story. As one character, who reminds me of Woody Allen, puts it, “your 20’s are all about hope, your 30’s are all about how dumb it was to hope”.
Don’t Think Twice was shot in the second half of 2015 and opened in New York just a few weeks ago. Word has spread quickly in the indie community and the film has been well received. I went, not knowing anything except for the single paragraph in the theater’s evening schedule. My experience with movies like this is mixed. Sometimes they seem pretentious about their low-budget moral purity, but in the case of Don’t Think Twice, that never happens. I don’t know anything about Birbiglia, don’t know if there’s any autobiographical element to the story and don’t know how the movie germinated, but that doesn’t really matter because the movie becomes a believable story about approaching middle age, the realization that not all dreams come true and the difficulties of trying to deal with a friend who is now more successful than anybody else in the group, but who is still the same person they knew before.
Don’t Think Twice has already been a relatively big hit in New York, where it is set, and was referred to in Metacritic with the term “universal acclaim”. I really enjoyed it. The cast works, like The Commune, as an ensemble; acting is completely realistic, not movie-contrived. The minimal production and grainy cinematography doesn’t detract; in fact, it gives the movie a realistic look that seems almost voyeuristic. A bigger production would have detracted rather than improved the film. When I recently reviewed the new Ghostbusters movie, I recall remarking that, unlike the old one, it tried but failed at being a buddy movie or a New York Movie, in spite of trying for both. Don’t Think Twice succeeds at both. If you’re not sure about seeing something so little with nothing approaching a superhero, just lie yourself for a few minutes that this is a French movie from the 1950’s that’s a verifiable classic of the cinema. After those few minutes, you will be absorbed. I’m assuming that DTT will be circulating around the festivals and showing at big-city indie theaters for a while and that it probably won’t be showing up in suburban cineplexes, but if you get the chance and can have an open mind, don’t miss it.