It’s not just about the free, high-end swag for celebrities, although that’s certainly nice. Of the many perks and privileges they are afforded, one of the more precious ones that can’t be entirely quantified is the professional line-jump pass that actors receive to jump behind the camera and into the director’s chair. Trading on their name-recognition value, they have instant credibility with an assortment of potential financiers, easily landing the sort of important creative meetings for which hundreds of would-be auteurs would punch out their own mothers.



Their efforts are typically small, independent-minded passion projects. This can result in some strange and pretentious trainwrecks (Nicolas Cage‘s Sonny comes to mind), but also all sorts of worthwhile little curios, from arresting character pieces like Joey Lauren Adams‘ Come Early Morning to deeply affecting dramas, like Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth and Tim Roth’s The War Zone. Toeing the line somewhere between these two poles is Sympathy For Delicious, Mark Ruffalo’s unusual feature film directorial debut, and the winner of a special directing prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Well acted but more dawdling and frustrating than dizzily engaging, this seriocomic entry is an arthouse effort through and through.

The story centers around an up-and-coming Los Angeles deejay, Dean O’Dwyer (Christopher Thornton, who also wrote the script), who is paralyzed from the legs down in a motorcycle accident, sinks into a deep depression, ends up on skid row, is revealed to have faith-healing powers, and then joins a punk-revivalist band. (So, yeah… another one of those stories, in other words.) While there are a few touches of dark comedy here and there, those expecting a more sharpened religious satire, a la something like Saved!, will come away disappointed. Tonally, Sympathy For Delicious is more than a bit of a mess. The movie presents its supernatural premise in a somewhat intriguingly unprepossessing way, but abandons early on any deeper exploration of its crisis of faith or, indeed, just human existence, in order to dive down the rock-n-roll rabbit hole — all to occasionally entertaining but in the end hopelessly middling effect. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Maya Entertainment, R, 96 minutes)