The Independent

In writer/director Stephen Kessler’s mockumentary, veteran comic Jerry Stiller (father of Ben) plays Morty Fineman, director of over 400 quickie movies in a career of 30 very-odd years. It’s a one-joke premise, and for general audiences it may wear out its welcome, but for film buffs it’s just too much fun to wear thin. Stiller makes Fineman (an obvious amalgam of 1960s schlockmeisters Roger Corman and Russ Meyer) a pugnaciously self-deluded dynamo, and he works well with Janeane Garofalo as his estranged, wary, but affectionate daughter Paloma. It’s hard to say what kind of filmmaker Kessler is (he may in fact have more in common with Morty Fineman than with Steven Spielberg), but the film has some of the gonzo, scattershot comic spirit of Take the Money and Run, Woody Allen’s first feature.