Oblique Movie Reviews, volume I

I watched The Station Agent in a crowded theater at a film festival in Rochester four years ago, and it was unlike every other movie experience I've had. The audience response was entirely individuated. Different pockets of the crowd laughed at different times, and often the same joke would generate several different kinds of laughter---some wan, some rueful, some uproarious, all at once. A Sunday afternoon showing of Knocked Up didn't generate quite as much good will, but the laughter was comparably diverse. The laughs coming out of my own throat were more typical of the way I laugh during a conversation with a friend than the way I laugh at a movie--appreciative laughs and sometimes even encouraging laughs, as though the movie were sensitive to my receptiveness. One way Judd Apatow seems to create that true-life texture is by letting his characters re-live interesting things that have just happened to them. We all do this sometimes, and it's a confession of our own boringness, on one level. "I have nothing to add right now--remember that hilarious thing that happened before?" It's much more organic than the situational hyper-awareness of Dawson's Creek, or the winky-wink instant nostalgia of Best Week Ever, and sometimes it plays like a wasted beat. I'm not even convinced that the failure of imagination is strictly on the characters' part, as opposed to Apatow's, but the effect, because I essentially like what's going on, is that I want to pick up the slack a little. I put in a little more effort to keep the energy high. I laugh an encouraging laugh.