Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) is a stand-up comic at a small club where she uses her own life as material. After hearing a set of jokes at his expense, another boyfriend ditches her. She seeks shelter and sympathy from her divorced parents, Jacob and Nancy (Richard Kind and Polly Draper), and her best friend Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann). Donna is a very immature 28-year old who takes her depression and tries to make it funny but all that happens is that she feels more sorry for herself.
Then she meets Max (Jake Lacy), a straight-arrow business-school grad from Vermont. They connect in an odd way because they are so different from each other. When Donna discovers that she is pregnant, she's too uneasy with the situation to tell him. Still, she realizes it's time to get her life together.
Writer and director Gillian Robespierre has fashioned an oddball comedy that has some funny moments. Although it is meant to showcase Jenny Slate's talents, Jake Lacy steals center stage by making kindness and patience into virtues that anyone in an intimate relationship would be well to follow. It is refreshing to see a good-hearted man in action doing what he does almost effortlessly.
Screened at the New Directors/New Films Festival, 2014, Lincoln Center, New York.
