Review: Sleepwalk with Me

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Sleepwalk with Me

If some films are smart, Sleepwalk with Me is NPR smart.

I call comedian Mike Birbiglia's terrific new comedy "NPR smart" for two reasons. First, the film is awash in the sort of sophisticated wit, wry observations and cultural relevance that make National Public Radio a welcome refuge for discerning radio listeners. Sleepwalk with Me has a very NPR-ish sensibility, playing like a mashup of the funniest lines from shows like Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and Car Talk (albeit without all the cackling).

The second reason why Sleepwalk with Me is NPR smart is that Birbiglia had the astonishingly good sense to enlist public radio god Ira Glass as a co-writer. (Glass hosts NPR staple This American Life, which co-produced the movie.) Birbiglia, Glass and co-writers Joe Birbiglia and Seth Barrish have delivered one of the funniest and brainiest films of the year.

Based on Mike Birbiglia's off-Broadway show and bestselling book, Sleepwalk with Me is the story of aspiring comic Matt Pandamiglio (Birbiglia), whose life and stand-up career are equally frustrating. "Career" is a generous term; Matt sometimes delivers short comedy routines -- and always bombs -- at the club where he tends bar. His relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Abby (Lauren Ambrose), has reached a critical juncture under pressure from friends and family to get married and start a family.

Career and relationship stress take their toll on Matt, whose anxiety manifests itself in dangerous, hilariously surreal sleepwalking episodes. Even when Matt discovers the secret to comic success -- telling self-deprecating jokes about his own life -- the sleepwalking persists, and his budding career further strains his relationship. The guy can't win -- but his trials make Sleepwalk with Me a comic gem.

Matt is a sympathetic and entirely relatable character, fighting a war with life on many fronts and seldom winning a battle. He narrates his story with endless drollery, often looking directly at the camera while explaining his sometimes less-than-stellar life choices. The narration is essentially a stand-up routine delivered with more than a little insecurity and self-effacing humility.

Sleepwalk with Me also has a streak of romantic comedy, although Matt and Abby's relationship problems also provide some of the film's more serious moments. Aside from a blessedly brief bit of meet-cutesiness early on, Sleepwalk with Me avoids the rom-com conventions that could have killed it. It presents the couple's rocky relationship with intelligence and sometimes cringe-inducing honesty; in this respect, Sleepwalk with Me is hardly a feel-good crowd pleaser. Much credit goes to the writers for weaving in the romantic elements without torpedoing the movie's wry tone.

Birbiglia's stand-up chops are evident in his perfect comic timing, but he also plays Matt with a tragic streak; like all good comedians, his humor stems from pain, or at least profound disenchantment. The rest of the cast has less to do, but they still create memorable characters thanks to the crackling script. Ambrose takes Abby from an unfailingly supportive girlfriend to a kind of stand-up comedy widow in a state of denial, proceeding in one direction while Matt heads in another. James Rebhorn is gruffly amusing as Matt's smothering, lecturing father, Frank, and Carol Kane does what she does best as Matt's pricelessly goofy mother, Linda.

Adding to the fun are cameos from comedians Hannibal Buress, Wyatt Cenac, Jessi Klein, Henry Phillips, Marc Maron, Kristen Schaal and David Wain. Glass also makes a fleeting appearance (then again, you won't recognize him if you know him only from the radio), as does the inimitable singer Loudon Wainwright III, whose now-and-then acting career started with a mid-Seventies role on a few M*A*S*H episodes. Austinites, look for local filmmaker Alex Karpovsky as surly comedian Ian Gilmore.

The sharp and erudite Sleepwalk with Me is everything we would expect from a Birbiglia-Glass collaboration, an often bitterly funny movie of great humanity. Let's hope the This American Life delivers more films of this caliber in the future.

Austin/Texas Connections: Sleepwalk with Me screened at SXSW 2012. Austin-based filmmaker Alex Karpovsky, who has a role in the movie, has written, directed or appeared in more than 20 local films. Wyatt Cenac lived in Dallas briefly during his high-school years.