Comedy Will Eat Itself

I was never a huge fan of The State on MTV - it always seemed like a less-anarchic tribute to The Kids in the Hall, which in turn seemed like a queer, Canadian Monty Python. I remember it being pretty big in my junior high school, though; there was a point at which I was ready to club the next guy who yelled out "I wanna dip my balls in it!" in the hallway.

The Baxter is the latest film by those guys, written and directed by Michael Showalter, who also wrote the last film by "those guys from The State", Wet Hot American Summer. I remember Summer as being intermittently hilarious - I did, however, see it at the end of a long, long night of drinking, so my sense of humour may not have been calibrated to the delicate absurdities of the movie.

The Baxter is a little like a neutered version of that; whereas Summer was a hipster parody of the '80s summer-camp flick, The Baxter isn't really equipped with the teeth to go after its romantic-comedy ancestors. Instead, it plays out a little like a sweet indie comedy in which people inexplicably act stilted and weird. One of the reasons that it's not that funny is that it's so stylistically dedicated to the idea of itself as movie that knows its genre, and yet it never really manages to subvert its own incredibly formulaic plotline.

This kind of knowing, ironic archness - comedy for comedians, if you will - only works with performers good enough to completely transcend the meta-stuff happening onscreen. You think about Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell in Anchorman; Bill Murray in Groundhog Day; or Owen Wilson in almost anything. Justin Theroux's character is meant to satirize eclectic NYC cool - he studies geodes, breakdances, makes a big deal of knowing where the best off-the-map burger joints are. Theroux does it well, but don't these kind of assholes satirize themselves to begin with? What does the movie add that two dozen Woody Allen movies haven't already said?

For all this, The Baxter really ain't all that bad - it's sweet, and sometimes funny, and an okay way to spend 90 minutes. The real bright spot is its confirmation of the arrival of Michelle Williams. After watching her consistenly and silently swallow her own pain in Brokeback Mountain, it's amazing to see her so participatory and magnetic in this movie. I'm as surprised as anyone to find myself acclaiming Jen from Dawson's as one of the premiere actresses of our day. Her movie choices, while not infallible, have always been interesting, and she has more range than I ever would have given her credit for.