Remember Paul Dano, the boy evangelist from "There Will Be Blood"?
He’s back as Brian, a mattress salesman, in "Gigantic," in which he rides an aura of confusion and bewilderment through an interesting, mostly enjoyable movie that displays bad manners and worse taste by men – John Goodman and Ed Asner – who are old enough to know better. Asner portrays Dano’s father, rude, crass and, when asked at a morning meeting if he would like something to drink, breezily suggests bourbon. Goodman buys a $14,000 mattress from Dano, then argues over the delivery charge. Both men are relics of years past as Asner asks if Dano’s "girl" can fetch coffee and Goodman makes tasteless homophobic jokes at the expense of his gay assistant.
Both men are scary in terms of their children, Dano on one hand and Goodman’s daughter, Harriet, known as Happy, on the other. Zooey Deschanel, bright as a new dime, is Happy, who practically pushes Brian into bed before even their first date. Brian, meanwhile, covers his own problems with a busy search to adopt a Chinese orphan.
Director Matt Aselton, who wrote the screenplay with Adam Nagata, wanders back and forth between fantasy and reality, adding a mysterious homeless man who physically attacks Dano. The man is obviously a figment of Dano’s imagination, but the beating is real and so is a gunshot wound.
The always excellent Jane Alexander is Happy’s mother, trying to understand her daughter.
Aselton’s wandering between real life and fantasy, and the obvious losers he has created in Brian and Happy, make for some interesting time, but not enough of it.
At the Tivoli.
-Joe