Customer Reviews

Entry Level

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This film is a charming and fun ride with great performances and some funny and timely commentary on corporate America, the American dream and how they don't always go hand in hand. The performances are delightful with a particularly charming turn by Kurtwood Smith as D.B. Sweeney's homeless friend and advisor. Funny and uplifting. I highly recommend checking this one out!

Entry Level was a nice surprise. The story is a light, funny look at the world of unemployment along with a bit of romantic comedy. The leads DB Sweeney and Missi Pyle have an easy, unforced style; they are much more endearing than the typical quirky independent characters that push everything in your face. Missi Pyle deserves more acting opportunities like this role. The supporting characters, especially Kurtwood Smith and Taylor Negron, are colorful but not unrealistic. (Sweeney's first encounter with Negron is pretty damn great.) Plenty of good, honest moments between all of these people as they hunt for jobs and vent about resumes or being too old... I loved the discussions on the awesome sandwiches made by Sweeney's character. Whenever someone mentioned an unusual ingredient, I totally got hungry.

BOUGHT IT BECAUSE D.B. SWEENEY WAS IN IT, BE COMPARED TO HIS PERFORMANCE IN THE CUTTING EDGE. HE WAS TERIBLE

A restaurant owner / chef looses his restaurant and has to find a job. We follow him on interview after interview. Until finally he realizes, his first and only love is..... wait for it..... running a restaurant. Well not really, he loves making sandwiches for people and starts a whole new business, selling sandwiches at lunch time. Oh along the way, he meets a girl. If you like the idea of this film, I haven't ruined the story for you, there are still a couple of twists.

Why was this not a good film? The story line, starts jumping the shark when the city does construction in front of Clay's restaurant and basically puts him out of business. As if there are no small business loans from the city to help bridge him during this time? Then our hero chef goes to the unemployment office and has no skills. Uses a typewriter, and has never heard of a computer. Now tell me, how does somebody in the restaurant business work for 20 years and never see a computer? So the chef has no skills. He has enough money to make sandwiches for everyone, but not enough to pay his mortgage. And he receives a FINAL NOTICE red letter that his house is being foreclosed, but he continues to live there. Ah, the loose ends just were too many to enjoy this film.

The acting - D.B. Sweeney more or less read his lines. He sort of has that Jeff Goldblum inability to move on screen. Sadly Sweeney is not as entertaining, quirky, or intelligent as Goldblum, so he comes off lame. Missi Pyle is a wet dish rag, with virtually no chemsitry between the two. Red from That 70's Show (Kurtwood Smith) phoned in his performance.

The music - everything that is bad about free or inexpensive licensed music. Strange choices that just took away from the action. The closing credit song is nice.

About the only good things about this film, almost every shot was in focus and properly exposed. The dialog could be heard perfectly. The sound was good, although the surround effects were limited. It's a clean film.

There's a laugh or two in here. The best is Clay's interview with Charlie (Taylor Negron, check his profile at IMDB, he's been a supporting actor in a many television shows and movies); a 5 minute moment in the film where the interview gets turned inside out. There's some fart humor. Age humor. Supposed corporate humor.

The DVD has no bonus features. There is a trailer for Dear Me: A Blogger's Tale, that is totally unexplainable. In about 3 minutes, the entire movie is shown. So you get a bonus, Dear Me is basically included on this disc.

While I agree that the movie is not 100% realistic, it is still probably the most true-to-life unemployment movie I have ever seen. Yes, in real life the chef would have a lawsuit on his hands against the city, which he would pursue; He would probably not give up on his restaurant just because there was construction in front of it. Also, Missi Pyle was miscast as Liz. She should have been played by someone like Parker Posey or Janeane Garafalo. It's hard to believe that someone who looks like a model (as Pyle does) wouldn't be able to land some type of receptionist job in ten months. And the happy ending was telegraphed and foreshadowed in a big way.

But there were many, many moments that were heartbreakingly true. The bad advice from the employment agent (telling someone he could have a job if he really wanted one), the age discrimination, the hiring of someone for reasons other than his work skills. People who are unemployed have few movies that dramatize their experiences, at least since the mid-90's. Usually, characters hop from dream job to dream job in romantic comedies and realistic dramas. This may not be a perfect movie, but it is undoubtedly one of the best of its tiny genre.