Review of I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (2006) by V H — 15 Oct 2007

In[i] I want Someone to Eat Cheese With[/i], Jeff Garlin, the big fat funny guy who plays Larry David's manager in HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm", plays a big fat lonely guy named James who lives with his mother in Chicago. James works as an actor in the Second City comedy troupe and stars as the perpetrator of pranks in a mean-spirited version of MTV's "Punk'd", but he dreams of landing a really great part. When he hears that the classic 50s film [i]Marty[/i] about a fat lonely butcher who lives with his mother is being remade, he longs for the chance to audition for the lead role.

James wants desperately to lose weight but spends many a night sitting alone on the hood of his car eating snack cakes purchased from a nearby convenience store. He tries Overeaters Anonymous but ends up sneaking out of his first meeting and heading straight to a nearby ice cream parlor. There he meets Sarah Silverman, who plays Sarah Silverman pretending to be a wacko ice cream store clerk named Beth, who gives James a free sundae and then poses a rather surprising query of a sexual nature involving a slang expression with which neither James nor I were familiar. Once she explains, James is both shocked and intrigued. When you haven't had sex for five years, I guess you're not going to let a little thing like mental instability deter you.

The film features a series of disjointed comedic sketches in which Garlin, a real-life Second City alum, roams around Chicago bantering with a steady stream of his old Second City cronies. During one such scene in which James and a pal discover that their favorite coffee shop is closed, the theatre abruptly lost its sound. As much as I hate to miss even a single moment of a movie, in this case I was fairly certain that nothing being said was essential to what passed for a plot, and that I'd be able to jump right back in without missing a beat.

Being that I live very close to the neighborhood where much of the movie was shot, trying to identify local streets and landmarks and grappling with the occasional geographical discontinuity became somewhat of a distraction for me. At one point, James walks out of the actual theatre in which I was watching the movie, which blew my mind with its self-referentiality for about a nanosecond until I was able to move on.

[i]I Want Someone to Each Cheese With[/i] feels like an extended episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" but without the Larry David edge. I could've done without the casting of Silverman, a one-trick pony whose trick I grew tired of about midway thru 2005's [i]Jesus is Magic[/i]. As if to make sure her schtick was recognizable, she even wore the exact same t-shirt in both films.

Despite the lack of plot and the hit-and-miss skits, Garlin's affability shines through in scene after scene. By the end of the film, he's managed to turn James into such a sympathetic character that I wanted him to have someone to eat cheese with too. And not Kraft Singles either; that fancy kind that you actually have to slice.