REVIEW: Rookie Jitters, Half-Assed '70s Sink Multiple Sarcasms

Another candy-apple red ride to the Mid-Life Crisis Invitational, Multiple Sarcasms is the antsy family man of indie films: Taking its capable, under-seen cast for granted, it blows the central character's problems all out of proportion. Written and directed by first-timer Brooks Branch, the film presents the smoothly running life of architect Gabriel Richmond (Timothy Hutton) circa 1979, just as it begins to stall. "What if there's no reason to feel sh*tty, but you do anyway?" he asks, setting up what seems like either a pointedly unpromising premise or an Abilify commercial. Back in the last days of disco, apparently, instead of consulting pharmacologists bored men became playwrights, in this case to underwhelming cinematic effect.

Despite having worked steadily over the 30 years since winning an Oscar for Ordinary People -- and perhaps because he never quite regained that level of success -- Hutton is one of those actors (along with Stockard Channing, also here as Gabriel's pragmatic agent) who manages to bring an element of pleasant, so-nice-to-see-you surprise to the screen. Even slumping through cocktail parties and blowing off his architectural day job for a matinee at Cinema Village, he's enjoyable to watch. Though it is set in an iconic moment in New York City's history, the look of the film is generic; along with obvious period signifiers (Gabriel ducks into Starting Over), the occasional afro (sported by Mario Van Peebles, who plays Gabriel's sassy gay colleague) and floppy hat are tacked on like Tickle Trunk afterthoughts.

Gabriel's old friend Cari (played with winsome charm by Mira Sorvino) runs a record label, and the vagina-themed punk bands she represents offer an odd counterpoint to the lilting indie rock (including songs by Wilco and Cat Power) on much of the soundtrack. When Joan Jett makes a cameo (looking, unlike Timothy Hutton, exactly the same as she did in 1979), the fraudulence of the rest of the film's late '70s vibe is exposed along with what's left of Jett's vocal cords.

Soon fired for slacking off, Gabriel is about the get the boot at home as well, where his "schmoozing wife" (several characters are given typeset, freeze-frame introductions), played by Dana Delaney, has had about enough. The couple share at least one scene in which they convincingly tease out the terms of their marriage: Where would they stand without a preternaturally wise 12-year-old daughter (India Ennenga) binding them? Is it possible -- or even relevant -- to try and find out? The future of Gabriel's relationship with Cari -- with whom he meets ritually to drink bad liquor from the bottle, presumably to dull the insane sexual tension between them -- is patently obvious. Even the filmmaker seems resigned to its inevitability, and relies not on his script but on his actors to fill in the intimate but complex rewards of a shared history.

A freshman to the teeth, Branch has a thing for fading to white and adding dubious stylistic doodles. Gabriel is synthesizing his life into his playwriting effort almost as quickly as he lives it, and several times this process is illustrated with imaginary do-overs of moments we have just witnessed. One of those, a playful musical number that recasts Gabriel's flubbed response to his daughter's first period, is a welcome anomaly, a shot of mordant, purposeful life. It also throws the listlessness of its surroundings -- and the unused potential of some pretty game stars -- into further relief.