Blumenthal (Seth Fisher 2013): USA

Reviewed by Christopher Stull. Viewed at the Metropolitan 4, Santa Barbara Film Festival.

After talking to director Seth Fisher, the guy on the right in the picture, he seemed like an awesome guy, and the fact that he wrote, starred in, and directed this film, I was super jealous and impressed. He’s a guy I can really look up to in the industry. And the shoes he wears in real life are the same as in the movie which is just funny.

Blumenthal is the fictional story of real life playwright Harold Blumenthal (Brian Cox)’s death and how his relatives cope with his absence. Seth Fisher plays his nephew Ethan, a neurotic, obsessive compulsive drug rep whose girlfriend breaks up with him. His father and Harold’s brother Saul (Mark Blum) has constipation and an obsession with getting a trophy of Harolds he believes is rightfully his. Saul’s second wife Cheryl (Laila Robins)deals with her dwindling acting career and her ever aging body. Each story is independent but each character interacts at various points in the film. Ethan tries to find the perfect woman to fit into his extremely intricate puzzle piece of a relationship idea, Saul meets a mysterious woman who helped his brother in some way, and Cheryl tries to feel pretty again by trying to get her dog walker to have sex with her.

This movie is a play, which is why I like it so much. Its written like a play, and the acting, especially by Seth Fisher, is the same type of acting you see on stage. Though the downside of this is that the darkest hour, the part where all hope seems lost, is almost non existent. It never seems like it could all go wrong, so it feels like more of an episode of a tv show than a film. But the comedy is phenomenal, the best of the films I saw at the festival. And the interview segments with Harold bookend the parts of the movie perfectly and each thing he says reflects what happens in part afterwards. This is one of the few films I want to watch over again just because it was so funny. I can’t recommend it enough.