A moody, self-absorbed, depressive is one way to describe Ben Stiller’s character in Noah Baumbach’s third feature as writer-director. Slacker doesn’t quite work because he’s a little too intense. He spends his days doing things like writing complaint letters to airlines. A New Yorker (like all of Baumbach’s characters, so far), he’s in Los Angeles housesitting for his brother, meeting up with old friends, taking care of the family dog, and starting a haphazard relationship with his brother’s assistant/errand girl (Greta Gerwig).
Stiller is best known for playing slightly hapless but likable regular-guy types in comedies such as There’s Something About Mary or Meet the Parents. Less often he plays egomaniacal types who are simultaneously heroes and objects of ridicule, as in comedies such as Zoolander or Tropic Thunder. But he has occasionally played more three-dimensional roles—a junkie in the non-comedy Permanent Midnight, a rabbi in the existential rom-com Keeping the Faith, and an aimless narcissist only intermittently comedic effort.
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viewed 5/13/10 at Ritz East and reviewed 6/6/10
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