Multiple Sarcasms

The cast is uniformly appealing in out-of-left-field ways, but writer-director Brooks Branch lets the story amble lazily, which -- like Gabriel and almost every character like him you've ever seen -- gets a little tiring.

Channing doesn't bring any new tricks to the table but with her character's tenacious and spirited nature she's fun to have around for a few brief scenes.

Branch also adds some welcome visual pizzazz when needed, and admirably tries to keep the movie from becoming the story of a heroic creative adventurer and the people who try to drag him down. The characters in Multiple Sarcasms are more nuanced, and don’t reduce to a generic good or bad.

Rather than some deeper understanding of the human condition, what we get from Multiple Sarcasms is a lot of heavy breathing.

Timothy Hutton's fine, loose-limbed perf as a man adrift lifts Multiple Sarcasms, frosh scribe-helmer Brooks Branch's male menopause apologia, out of cliche-ridden territory -- at least temporarily.

Multiple Sarcasms happens to be the title of the play within the movie, and it turns out to be by far the most interesting thing in the film. Not that many people will want to suffer through the first 90 minutes of this vanity production to get there.

A vanity production by Branch, previously a studio branding consultant, it's the kind of odious, self-validating wish fulfillment that actually makes you appreciate the more generous self-absorption of Henry Jaglom films.