An actress desperate for a break (Claire Armstrong) and a playwright (Naomi Skwarna) living off checks from her dad funnel all their untapped creative passion into writing and performing instructional skits for corporate seminars. As in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, there’s something funny and charming about amateur artists investing a modest theatrical exercise with immodest creative ambitions, and Daniel Warth, who cowrote this Canadian comedy with Miles Barstead, manages to score laughs off his hapless protagonists without ever sullying their dreams. Warth edited the movie too, though apparently he’s unfamiliar with the concept of editing stuff out; the second half slows appreciably as the heroines gear up for a make-or-break gig, and a tense countdown to the performance is staged not once but twice, from different perspectives.
Dim the Fluorescents
2 hours 6 min • 2017
