Neil and Sarah used to talk about bands they love, now they talk with regards to gift cards. They are, in short, in that uneasy transition from hipster to yuppie, and they’re asking by themselves that universal question of most thirtysomething married couples: How The Hell Did That Happen? In an effort to rekindle their relationship, they set out on a journey that lands them the government financial aid their old neighborhood, in a trendy portion of Los Angeles. A few drinks reestablish a few memories, and Neil and Sarah find yourself breaking into the apartment they employed to share, and squatting illegally for some days in their twentysomething existence. After throwing a flaming “housewarming” party, Neil and Sarah must make use of their grown-up resources to prevent some serious consequences.
In John Chuldenko’s Nesting, Todd Grinnell, an actor of typically TV sitcoms, plays thirtysomething adolescent Neil having a stoned-like smile a Paul Rudd character would make use of to buffer his method through life’s problems. But this choice probably has less related to Grinnell that it does with all the film’s larger inspiration: the recent I Appreciate You, Man. Both are dramedies set in Los Angeles that function barely grown-up male characters who pretty much step back from their particular steady, more mature girlfriends to attempt to overcome dormant shortcomings into their lives. But where John Hamburg’s film concerning the “girlfriend guy” who continues on man dates was a smooth and beautiful, albeit racially dishonest, depiction of modern Los angeles, this film about some guy who always wears the ironic T-shirt and wants with an affair with the woman his partner was five years ago over-complicates its Los Angeles settings with characters always wanting to proudly (mis)identify traits of Silverlake (a new trendy neighborhood described by way of mall clerk as filled with “hipster noodle bars” as well as “prii”) in minutes that quickly become boring.
The way Nesting goes out of its way to express to us where it’s set is symptomatic of the film in general. Its title, for instance, is little more compared to a cute, needlessly made-up term for that premise-a couple rethinking the terms in their relationship-of numerous films. And the script gets the couple speak as should they were impersonating themselves, describing their lives-something about spending weekends at IKEA feeding on Swedish meatballs and producing furniture from Euroglyphics-in generalizations that are so broad that the characters shrink pertaining to them, an affect that flattens much of the film’s humor and also confines the characters in neat categories.
To be sure, most comedies employ stereotypes to get a laugh, but Nesting is far too precious and contrived by half for being that funny; it wants to reach to the grab bag of Silverlake hipster tradition for easy jokes, but it ultimately occurs off too enamored having a neighborhood it only usually know from a range. At one point, the film even satisfied substitutes its favorite neighborhood for a recently opened coffee store in Echo Park while at the same time having its characters proclaim, after hearing from a waitress which the kitchen now serves the actual White Stripes sandwich instead of their favorite Culture Team one, “This is our location, we’ve got history the following, you can’t fake that will. ” Nesting just would.