A Better You (Matt Walsh, 2014): USA

Reviewed by Lia Durham. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2015.

A Better You had it’s world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this year. Directed and co-written by Matt Walsh, who can be seen right now on the HBO series Veep and is one of the founding members of the improv theater/school Upright Citizens Brigade. He does a great job of mixing hilariously funny bits with sad awkward moments.

The film centers around Ron, played by Brain Huskey who also co-wrote the film with Walsh. He is a hypnotherapist who works out of a remodeled shed in his backyard. His specialty is offering people quick fixes for their afflictions like smoking and nail biting. He has a delusional sense of self not connecting to the people around him just doling out pseudo therapeutic advice. Not being able to stand the phoniness anymore his wife takes their kids and leaves him. Thus begins his midlife crisis.

This movie is full of amazing comedic actors and standups. Like Horatio Sanz, Natasha Leggero, Nick Kroll, Erin Hayes and Rob Huebel who play an array of characters mostly patients of Ron. Some of the funniest scenes are a series of shots quickly cut between different sessions where we hear these people’s problems and sometimes the not so professional way Ron handles them.

Even though Matt Walsh and Brian Huskey wrote this film they didn’t actually write any dialogue. The entire film is improvised the actors were only provided with a paragraph or two about the direction of the scene and then were free to play and get through the scene how they wanted to. Knowing this it makes it even more clear how talented everyone in this film really is.

This is a film about embracing your faults. Being happy with who you are and cutting yourself some slack.