Skills like this

Monty Miranda’s Skills Like This (2007, USA) is a very promising first picture. The central character, Max Solomon (Spencer Berger, who also penned the script) is a struggling playwright. Lucid and soul-searching, he gives it up when he realises he has no talent for the theatre and is living life as a pseudo artist. Lack of direction and marketable skills, he turns benevolent bank robber on a whim, and uses the money (some of it at least) to make others happy. He has finally found a field in which he excels as he effortlessly pops off a few more hold-ups – stores, drive-ins, etc. But he falls in love with a beautiful bank teller who disapproves. The crux of the story revolves around what to do next? Continue with the only successful job he has ever had and loose his girlfriend, or reform and face “unemployment” again. Bow out gracefully, but how?

His entourage is composed of excellent second roles, particular Gabriel Tigerman as Dave. But the film belongs to an unknown actor, Brian D. Phelan, who gives a hilarious performance as Tommy, a truly delightful character who catcalls prepubescent girls on the basis of their future seductiveness, confuses Robin Hood with Red Robin. None-too-bright, gullible and charming, he brims over with confidence in his literally non-existent skills (save bicycle spokes repairman), a duped over-believer in the American myth of individual man’s potential. (In a film of darker implications, his character would be hanging out with Lebowski). Mr Phelan has a naturally elegant screen presence, and watching him we sometimes get a glimpse of a magic yesteryear – I could easily see him in a more polished role, reminiscent of a boyish Clark Gable, or a young Frank Capra hero.

There are a few rough spots in the picture: its use of music does not seem to fit and it loses its loopy edginess when it dips into guilty seriousness (the hospital scenes would do better in another picture). The film cannot decide what to be. What starts out as a goofy comedy about alternative lifestyles, indicting the contemporary job scene, starts compromising this stance midway through. This makes the ending ring false (even though Mr Phelan is hilarious once again). We are left with the feeling that it will turn out to be fling, that the dance will end, handsome youth will come home, settle down, find jobs, lose them, find more jobs and adapt to the way of the world today.

But the film has a light-hearted freshness about it that is a welcome relief from the strained comic style of Ben Stiller, where laughter is heavy and tinged with embarrassment. In Skills like this, your laughter will be genuinely hearty. Monty Miranda and Brian D. Phelan are not to be missed the next time around.

Butterfly Woo Dip.





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