Highball (2002)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A small group of friends attend three different parties spread months apart. Some funny bits, some funny gags, but the film feels incomplete. I choose to attribute the good parts to Noah Baumbach, not out of liking his other work, as I have yet to see his "Kicking and Screaming" film (heard nothing but good things though), but rather because I REALLY want "The Life Aquatic" to be great. And I pin the blame of the bad scenes on the shoulders of Christopher Reed, because..well because the man made "The Sixth Man" 'nuff said. The acting is good all around though. Kudos to that.My Grade:C+Where i saw it: Showtime

Okay, now this is a very funny movie...if you can appreciate its brand of humor. If big-budget Hollywood comedies are your bag, and you need a bunch of sight gags and constant over-the-top situations in order to laugh, then you'll probably see this movie as a boring, poorly-made waste of time. But it's not...and if you're a fan of stage plays or older-style comedy films (before the attention span of the average film-goer plummeted), then you'll certainly get some laughs from this outing.Filmed on a shoestring budget over six shooting days, this film is an impressive result. If it had been shot in three months, and had turned out the way it had, it wouldn't seem quite as impressive...but it would still be a funny movie. What I'm saying here is that not only is it a good comedy, it's also one of those rare films that's shot quickly, for very little money, and STILL manages to shine.As a filmmaker, I would have never attempted to shoot a comedy on such a tight schedule, with so little money. Comedies are very tricky...by comparison, dramas are much easier...at least in my mind. But this little no-budget comedic gem packs in enough laughs to please fans of stage comedies and classic cinematic comedies. Truly an impressive film which delivered more than I'd expected it to.

After eight years of working in the film industry and a life time of watching them, I've finally found the worst film to date. This movie was horrible for a multitude a reasons. I've checked the directors background and saw that is was not his first. This came as a surprise to me considering the number of amature mistakes that I found, just after the first couple minutes. Not only was the lighting, acting, (outside of Eric Stoltz) and story line well below sub par, but the set was one of the worst dressed sets that I've ever seen. You might think that I'm nit picking a bit, but then again isn't that saying something within itself.

It might be creatively written, it might have been done a nice small budget, but I still can't give the movie much praise. While it tried its hardest to make the audience laugh, I kept waiting for a punchline that never appeared. Parts became monotonous, dragging so far as to invoke the fast forward button on my remote control. Possible it wasn't the script at all, it felt that the actors and actresses had little or no chemistry or emotion throughout.