happythankyoumoreplease

During one of his many moments of absurdly articulate self-reflection, Sam (How I Met Your Mother’s Radnor) recalls a quote from a writer who opined that in five years, you hate who you are now. The problem is, the NYC twentysomethings who populate happythankyoumoreplease don’t need to wait five years; they have quite enough contempt for themselves already.

This might be easier to tolerate if they didn’t constantly express their troubles aloud to each other. Sam and his best friend, Annie (Akerman), are the biggest offenders. The former is a short-story writer—a vocation that becomes an excuse for his less savory actions—who inexplicably (and illegally) takes in a young boy (Algieri) separated from his foster family on the subway. Annie suffers from baldness due to alopecia and struggles to remain optimistic about finding a partner, but she has no qualms about judging a charming suitor (Hale) based solely on his physical appearance. Kazan and Schreiber are the film’s saving grace as a longtime couple who face a turning point in their relationship: He wants to uproot her from her beloved New York to follow his aspirations in L.A.

With bursts of indie music accompanying lingering stares toward the camera, the movie echoes Zach Braff’s Garden State. But despite having twice as many protagonists as Braff did, Radnor has far less to say about any of them.