There’s a moment near the end of Mike Birbiglia's Don’t Think Twice when Sam (Gillian Jacobs) stands alone on a stage, her four friends having abandoned their improv group as they all try to simply move on and become new people. The group, “The Commune” was a group of people slavishly devoted to the art of improv theater and dreamed of gigs on Weekend Live (you just guess what that’s making fun of). As you can tell this is a film completely built on improv through and through. That’s why it makes sense that Birbiglia would structure the piece as if it were an improv performance. There are six major characters to cover in Don’t Think Twice: Miles, Sam, Jack, Lindsey, Allison, and Bill. Each of them needed a proficient amount of screen time to make the movie work. That’s particularly hard balance to place, but the secret is simple. Don’t Think Twice is masterfully built. It introduces us to the characters while they are performing at the beginning, setting up each character's importance to the story through their importance in the improv sketch. Sam starts off the show front and center because she is the most important character, and the story’s themes hinge on her. Everybody else is relegated to the back because while they are integral to the plot (they are part of the show to say), they are nowhere near as important as Sam. And then from the beginning Sam’s story starts even if she’s not necessarily the driving force of the plot at the moment. It’s like a great improv sketch. Soon everyone who is part of the show has started to add their little section of the story. Bill’s father is in the hospital, Jack is getting the opportunity of a lifetime, Lindsey is troubled, Allison is desperately trying to be happy and dealing with past mistakes and Miles is trying to find a way to outdo his students who seem to be leaving him in the dust. Everything about these characters is well defined and well thought out, and while some may get overshadowed by others (Lindsey and Allison don’t get that much to do), it never matters that they don’t because they aren’t the front and center characters. Blocking and movement in the first scene define the structure of the movie, and then the film takes that and knocks it out of the park. The best part of all of this is that Don’t Think Twice never feels like it’s doing this on purpose. There’s never any sense that the internal story mechanics are being pushed any specific way and that’s most likely because of the improvisational delivery that the film brings to the plate. All of the actors from Birbiglia to Keegan-Michael Key to Gillian Jacobs feel almost like they are playing themselves keeping a realistic and hilarious beat to all the delivery. There are lines that seem to push for “iconic and scripted,” but even those fail to seem that way. Instead, they land with an elegant poignancy that all but continues to elevate the proceedings. Plus, these people are writers. You can believe they’re going to say something pretentious every once in awhile and that in itself is kind of funny. All that aside, the most important thing about Don’t Think Twice is that as a movie it’s optimistic. It’s about how people who have become slavishly devoted to an art form are both harmed and benefited by that form, but mostly about what happens whenever they can transcend the idea that they need anything else other than that love.for art and each other. For someone with the constant worry that everything won’t be ok If they don’t succeed that’s a beautiful prospect. This is an oasis of optimism that is incredibly beneficial. If you love art and want to make it more than anything in the world Don’t Think Twice understands that and encourages that even in the darkest of times that passion is something you can always fall back on. Besides, it’s a strong film even without those implications and masterfully balances the ability to feel spontaneous. Don’t Think Twice gets a 10 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |