The Baxter’s
Elliot Sherman is the very embodiment of romantic compromise. If George
Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” announces swaggering screen bad boys and
exotically flavored orchestral scores herald the arrival of cinema’s most
sensitive heartthrobs, Death Cab for Cutie’s “The Sound of Settling” would
serve as the putative theme song for Elliot, a dowdy but sincere accountant who
finds himself caught between well-heeled fiancée Caroline Swann (The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Elizabeth
Banks) and Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams), a bookish temp who seems on the
surface a much better geek match given that both she and Elliot read the
dictionary as a book.

The Baxter marks
the feature directorial debut of Michael Showalter, who of course got his start
as part of the sprawling comedy collective The State — which achieved a cultish
following in the 1990s via an eponymous sketch show on MTV — and later went on
to co-script and produce the peerless summer camp send-up Wet Hot American Summer. Showalter’s leaping off point for The Baxter is the great screwball
romantic comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, films in which second male leads like
Ralph Bellamy and John Howard took it squarely on the chin when the Cary Grants
of the world swept in and relieved them of their women. (For a modern day
comparison, think of Bill Pullman’s jettisoned character from Nora Ephron’s Tom
Hanks-Meg Ryan romantic comedy Sleepless
in Seattle.) The twist here is that The
Baxter repositions the nice guy who never gets the girl (hence the stiff
but regal nickname) as its leading man, to drolly winning if extremely dry
effect.

The film’s basic story arc finds Elliot (whom Showalter also
stars as) awkwardly attempting to assert himself and land his leading lady,
even if in his heart there’s some confusion as to whom that is. Though he’s not
a virgin, Elliot is a man-child whose unfailing politeness (“Like I always say,
compromise is the key to success…”) has metamorphosed into a sort of wussy,
serial acquiescence. When Caroline’s dashing ex-boyfriend Bradley Lake (Justin Theroux) arrives on the scene, Elliot recognizes the familiar warning signs of
an impending dumping and reacts alternately with nice-guy petulance — think of
the most fastidious passive-aggressiveness possible — and wan resignation.

Showalter’s mannered comedy is as distinctive and guileless
as it is perhaps out-of-fashion, or at least decidedly non-mainstream. It stems
from situational awkwardness and absurdity, and is always perfectly balanced
between heaping helpings of earnestness and silliness. (Frequent collaborators
and Stella costars David Wain and
Michael Ian Black also pop up here, as Elliot’s emasculated
brother-in-law-in-waiting and a zonked-out neighbor, respectively.) It’s micro
comedy instead of macro comedy, in other words, and if broader humor and
joke-driven laughs are more your forte then you won’t want to waste your time
with The Baxter.

If wry, understated character comedy is up your alley,
though, you’ll likely dig this movie. For most of its running time, it really
works; things only bog down when Showalter starts relying too heavily on
narration and contrivance to advance scenes. The former is funny when building
up the temperament and personality of Elliot, but less so after the parameters
of character roundelay have already been clearly established. A brief scene
with The Station Agent’s Peter
Dinklage as a (gay) wedding planner also falls flat.

The amusingly observant point of the film, though, is that
for all we allow others to dictate about our own self-perception and, in many
cases, worth, we are still the stars of our own stories — our own leading men
and women. As Elliot rises, another must fall. It’s the circle of life, and we
all go through it at some point. (IFC Films, PG-13, 90 minutes) For an interview with Michael Showalter, click here.