Dark Horse

Dark Horse:  In this engaging indie dramedy by writer-director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness), an epic underachiever falls in love with a heavily medicated depressive.

This guy has not moved out from his boyhood room in his parent’s house.   He gets a paycheck from his dad’s company although the office assistant does his work while he spends his day bidding for collectible toys on eBay.  He drives a bright yellow Hummer that blares the sappiest pop music.  Yet he feels completely entitled, is surly to his enabling parents and bellows like a wounded water buffalo when his genius remains unrecognized.

This guy is remarkably unsympathetic.  Still, Solondz ‘s clear-eyed and unsparing portrait is not mean-spirited and, eventually, becomes even empathetic. In particular, Solondz makes able use of dream/fantasy segments to explore the yearnings of the characters.

Jordan Gelber is excellent as the hapless blowhard protagonist.  The cast (Selma Blair as the girlfriend, Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow as the parents) is quite good, too, especially Donna Murphy as the office assistant and Aasif Mandvi as the girlfriend’s ex.

I saw this at a screening with Todd Solondz, and he said that Dark Horse is a reaction to the Apatowesque man-child movies.  In those films, the underachieving slackers are endearing goofs.  Here, the underachieving slacker is realistically unattractive, but has a realistic vulnerability and fundamental humanity.  Solondz says that the protagonist, at last, finds life in death.

Dark Horse has the trademark Solondz quirkiness, but without the trademark perversion.  As with most Solondz films, I’m still thinking about it several days later.

Note:  In Dark Horse, Walken and Farrow appear to be watching Seinfeld.  Instead of paying the fee to license a snippet of the real Seinfeld, Solondz got Jason Alexander, Estelle Harris and Jerry Stiller to read Solondz-written faux Seinfeld dialogue.