'Don't Think Twice' A Review

Don't Think Twice is a dramedy about an improv group in New York City all clamoring to get on the Saturday Night Live stand-in "Weekend Live". After the TV producers visit one of the group's shows two of the six get tapped to audition. One of the two get the job and this coupled with the closing of their home theater forces the group to contend with their respective futures and the validity of their creative ambitions.

Although stacked with talented actors and comedians the cast flounders and mostly fails to bring to life writer/director Mike Birbiglia's mostly flat, immature, and trite script. Much of the behavior and dialogue of the characters is unbelievable, unlikable, juvenile or all three. Keegan-Michael Key gives the most compelling performance of the film and is given action and lines that most closely reflect how adult humans actually behave. The rest of the characters come across as self-involved petulant children. We're suppose to believe this group are all close friends however the minute one of their members gets commercial success they are immediately jealous, lash out, and attempt to leverage the friendship for gain. The characters as individuals aren't really developed so when they begin to be ugly to each other it doesn't necessarily make sense nor do we really care.

As an improviser myself I can say that Birbiglia's portrayal of the improv community and the art form itself are cliched and childish, perhaps emblematic of the burgeoning scene in the 90's but now totally irrelevant and incorrect. As a fellow artist I can say he gets wrong ambition and jealousy which are much more complicated and nuanced than he leads us to believe, not to mention, in almost every art form there is no single(Weekend Live) type of goal. The movie fails to take into consideration the myriad of different creative jobs, pursuits, opportunities, and projects that improv comedy, as a starting point, or any artistic discipline for that matter, could lead to. That however is mostly forgivable as improv is still a relatively unknown niche if the characters were actually three dimensional humans. They decidedly are not.

There are many egregious errors in the film, improv and interpersonal, but two stick out. The first is that Key's character Jack and his girlfriend Sam played by Gillian Jacobs break up during an improv set. This is so contrived and dumb its painful for all the wrong(dramatic) reasons. The second is the fact that Miles, Birbiglia's character, continually sleeps with his young impressionable students and its treated with a casual acceptance, at times its even a punchline, which is offensive. Doubly so given the conversations being had in comedy communities throughout the country.

Tone-deaf, cloyingly contrived, offers a feel-good thesis with no supporting evidence.

Don't See It.