Day 32: The Puffy Chair

Director- Jay Duplass

Writer(s)- Jay and Mark Duplass

Starring- Mark Duplass, Rhett Wilkins, Katie Aselton

Critics Review- "Built on beats of deadpan timing and splendidly understated reaction shots."- Bill Stamets "Chicago Sun Times"

Out of a possible of 5 stars- 3 1/2 stars

My review-

I mostly know Mark Duplass and Katie Aselton from FX's hit show The League, I just never knew that Mark Duplass was a writer and a director. In his first feature film, also co-written and directed by his brother Jay Duplass; The Puffy chair is about a man, his girlfriend and his brother on a road trip to get a chair that looks like the one his father had when he was younger. At first this seems like a typical road trip where everything goes wrong, but not in the way one would think. It seems like everything that would go wrong would make the characters take a look and evaluate their lives at this point in their life, the slow pace of the movie makes it work if it was fast paced it would not be as good as it was. Being apart of the "mumblecore" movement also sets the tone for this movie, which used improvisation for most of the film, but seemed genuine and were not able to tell which would be script or which would be dialogue. The only thing I found useless for this movie was the use of the word "dude" every other sentence. seeing Duplass and Aselton out of their element of comedy for the first time, and in a drama I admit I was a little taken back, but in my opinion they did an amazing job in a drama, and being a real life couple at the time made the fights more believable. With the sudden ending I found myself wanting to see what happened next for the characters. I also liked how it was shot almost sort of like a documentary even though it wasn't one. This movie was recommended to by a friend, and like it was recommend to me, I recommend it as well