Review of Humor Me

The overwhelming sense I got while watching this movie was that I was observing real people and not actors. The ensemble cast really clicks in their actions with one another, and even though Elliott Gould's celebrity intrudes every now and then, even he looked like he belonged with this often times dysfunctional group of characters. The principal dynamic in the story involves Nate Kroll's (Jemaine Clement) relationship with his father (Gould), and how Nate stumbles through the tail end of his four year writer's block and a recently failed marriage. For his part, Bob Kroll relies on a consistent stream of never ending jokes to lighten the burden of his wife's passing, along with a heart condition that turns frighteningly real, eventually leading to a favorable reconciliation with his older son. I found it kind of interesting that the rental locker that Bob used to store his early family mementos was numbered '808', because if you spotted it quickly, it looked like that was spelling out his name in capitals. Just another little quirk among all the other quirks Nate encountered on his little side trip to the Cranberry Bog retirement community. It's not unusual for me to come across a movie I never heard of before, and was kind of shocked to read on this site that the film only grossed around forty grand when it was released. Granted it's not an awards contender by any means, but I do think it deserves a wider audience, especially among IMDb viewers who might nudge it's rating up a notch. Maybe a little word of mouth could move it in the right direction, as Nate Kroll's words would have suggested when he remarked to his departing wife, "Quality work takes time".