Mediocre Movie Club Movie Reviews

Don't Think Twice

6/24/2017

B
3.08

As their theater closes, an improv troupe contemplates what happens next.

Directed by Mike Birbiglia
Starring Mike Birbiglia, Keegan Michael Key, and Gillian Jacobs
Initial Review by Phil Crone

Over nearly a decade and thousands of hours of listening to The Adam Carolla Show, I’ve become more and more fascinated with the art of improv. Carolla is a gifted improviser, and he will occasionally harp on the important rules of improv and his days in improv in his 20’s while he waited on his big break. That, coupled with my love of Saturday Night Live in my formative years, drew me to the subject matter in “Don’t Think Twice.” Writer/director Mike Birbiglia brings those themes to life in a recognizable way here. I really enjoyed “Don’t Think Twice” for its memorable cast of characters and small moments that will stick with me, even if the overall narrative was a little lacking.

“Don’t Think Twice” focuses on a group of six improv actors who might as well be family. They live together, they work together, they visit sick relatives together. Many of the best moments of the movie occur at this time, between the warmup rituals, the impressions of Bill’s sick father, and arguing on the couch about the best “Weekend Live” cast. (A debate I love hearing about SNL, and Birbiglia states the truest words of the movie when he suggests that people think the cast they grew up with is the best. And he’s right.) Birbiglia spends the first third of the movie specifically hammering this home. Birbiglia draws on several archetypes to create The Commune – the veteran grinder, the artist-of-all-trades, the manic depressive, the star-in-waiting, the teacher and lover of “the craft,” and the rich kid who can follow her dreams until her parents cut her off. (We saw that last one in my favorite, “Frances Ha,” didn’t we?) The closest corollary I could think of would be a band touring together, hoping to one day be signed. Unlike a band though, not everyone HAS to have success.

Which is precisely what happens here. When Jack gets signed by “Weekend Live,” chaos ensues. Jack’s plight feels familiar to me by also being a fan of Jay Mohr, and it seems that Birbiglia adapted a lot of stories like his to show how difficult it can be to break through on the big stage. The rest of the group, now seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, turns to looking out for themselves and descends into jealousy and, ultimately, tosses aside the tenets that made them the cohesive and successful “family” that they were. This is the part that I didn’t realize occurred, and given Birbiglia’s commitment to familiar touchstones in the rest of the movie, I wouldn’t doubt that it does happen.

The movie ends with a reunion of sorts, with Jack having “made it” and everyone else looking like they were content with life. The ending felt a bit too cute and almost obligatory. There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with it, and it was nice to see The Commune continue on in some form. This wasn’t the type of movie that needed a dark ending, but it did feel odd to end the way it did.

While I mentioned several aspects of the movie, the overall narrative just never clicked with me. I enjoyed all the characters and there are going to be a lot of moments I remember, but I found myself not terribly concerned with where the plot was actually going.

I really enjoyed a lot of scenes in “Don’t Think Twice,” and I’m going to remember them for a long time to come. The characters are well-realized and each gets a chance to shine in their own way. Being a fan of improv, it was great to see so many of those things present here. Even though the overall story just wasn’t there for me, “Don’t Think Twice” is a well-done movie that is necessary viewing for anyone who enjoys improv or SNL.

Grade: B

7 Comments

Lane

6/26/2017 09:38:35 pm

Much like surfing, Twitter, skiing, or sex, improv comedy is something everyone thinks they will be awesome at until it’s show time. Then, more often than not, the results are forgettable at best; embarrassing and painful at worst. Thus finds the personalities at the center of “Don’t Think Twice,” whose sojourn through the painful and embarrassing land of improv just took longer than most.

“Don’t Think Twice” is one of those movies whose simplicity (you could argue, predictability) in story arc and action sometimes undersells what it’s able to achieve in character development and just plain likability. I finished this movie and thought, “well, that was nice,” while, days later, found myself still pondering why the talented Sam felt that “the well” of local improv was enough for her life; or wondering if the fame-be-knighted Jack went on to be more like Bill Murray or Rob Schneider (no offense to “Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigalo”). The characters and their stories, while often predictable in the film, found a way to stick with me. This film, like improv, has a simplicity that belies the skill and nuance that pulled it off.

So, I hand it to Birbiglia for making a movie that seems easy but took years of experience and rejection to get right. On the surface, Jack and Sam would seem to be the lead characters, but it’s really Birbiglia’s Miles that is the lead here. He’s only missing an addiction issue and a stint in AA before he’s the perfect tragi-comic anti-hero (something Gillian Jacobs pulls off quite well in Netflix’s “Love”). Miles is the example of why thinking twice is hazardous, and it would have only been the perfect tragi-comic ending for him to reject dad-hood for the empty pleasure of the improv stage. Too bad.

Like Birbiglia himself, this is also a movie about people in their mid-40’s looking back on their 30’s and taking stock (just like “Swingers” or “Garden State” or the aforementioned “Francis Ha” is people in their 30’s looking back on their 20’s). Much like the hero of the Dylan song which lends its graces to the title and credits, the artistic meat of the film is in the tension of characters that hopelessly, and borderline destructively, follow a path that they know is wrong but just can’t see another way through. Personally, as someone who realized in the not distant past that I only chiefly have a passion for dead or dying institutions (church…scholarship...fiction novels…print newspapers…going to movie theaters) I found the existential strife of the film relatable and even something to laugh at. A director with a bit more artistic heft might have plunged that knife a little deeper into the hearts of us hopelessly unemployable wanna-be artist/journalist/pastor/film critics, but for a 90-minute Sunday afternoon jolt of entertainment, I’m okay that he didn’t.

I agree with Phil’s original review that the ending seemed a bit too neat and tidy for all the mess of the main story, but perhaps that’s just the view of someone who made it through their 30’s to finally find some measure of meaning and success in what they set out to do; or maybe it’s Hollywood’s obsessive focus-testing.

This is more of a writer and actor film than a director’s film, but improv is a writer and actor’s domain, so that makes sense. The standard in Hollywood until 2010 used to be you either had 120 minutes for a “real film,” or you had a 24 episode TV series, and nothing in between that worked for commercial success. That dynamic is completely on its head now, and I could have even imagined “Don’t Think Twice” as a really interesting 8 or 10 episode cable series—a version of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” that didn’t suck. Maybe Birbiglia will read this and give that a shot, who knows.

Grade: B+

Bryan

6/27/2017 02:21:50 pm

Somewhere Jon and I talked about "Don't Think Twice" and damn it, I can't find it.

Don't Think Twice is not an actual comedy. There aren't more than a handful of funny parts. It's mostly the tragedy involving envy and hubris. The acting is a mix of actual acting and not acting, but I don't think the actors are ever comfortable with their characters off the stage.

This is worth watching as it tells an original story, but the farther I get from it, the less of a "must see" it becomes. B-

Jon

6/27/2017 06:58:27 pm

We talked about doing an interro-tron review but never actually did.

6/27/2017 06:57:52 pm

Reposted Letterboxd review:

In Don't Think Twice, writer/director Mike Birbiglia is unquestionably close to the material. There appears to more distance in this than his autobiographical debut Sleepwalk With Me, but Birbiglia is a practiced hand at improv comedy, though one who has experienced far more success than his Don't Think Twice character. His Miles is one member of six in NYC improv troupe The Commune, all of whom are experiencing some kind of career crisis/reevaluation as the building that The Commune regularly has performed in for years is about to be torn down. Chris Gethard's Bill is losing a parent, Keegan-Michael Key's Jack has just been hired on the film's SNL-imitator, and Gillian Jacobs' beautifully-realized Samantha is grappling with whether or not to follow Jack, her boyfriend, into greater fame. There is a feeling of truth in these, and other, conflicts that burble to the surface amidst The Commune's transition period, and Birbiglia is recreating a lot of conversations I've heard on various comedy interview podcasts about what success actually looks like. He writes from verisimilitude, but as far as films about NYC dreamers go, Don't Think Twice's aspiring artists have chosen a very specific medium, one revealed to have a very low ceiling for ticket prices. In the most disappointing aspect of the film, The Commune just aren't very funny, making them delusional to this viewer instead of plucky, which Birbiglia was likely going for. Don't Think Twice can be appreciated from a distance. As a complement to its honesty, I would have liked to have more humor from these professional comedians. C+

Sean

6/29/2017 10:48:26 pm

I thought it was plenty funny.

I kept noticing every time they seemed to be in a particular moment instead of digging into that they jump cut to the next scene, the parallel of that direction with the keeping things moving style of improv was a nice touch. I enjoyed watching the Commune watch Jack do the ticket taker but that was finally his big splash- Miles comment that it was good and well done but not funny was right in the money and can describe 95% of all comedy today. I did have a negative reaction to the group meeting Ben Stiller. I couldn't believe they would be so star struck. They are a group who you would think has stumbled on a few stars before and especially Miles' general attitude of feeling under appreciated he would be polite but resentful knowing he should be in stillers shoes. Overall, good movie B+

Shane

7/1/2017 04:29:26 pm

Touching and funny
Life is fucking hard you know
Even for funny folks

A-

7/1/2017 04:30:26 pm

This movie deserves more time than I had. A great breakdown of the quarter life crisis.

Don't Think Twice

B
3.08

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Don't Think Twice

B3.08

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B
3.08