The Happy Poet

Off-handed and yet quite artfully observed, The Happy Poet's winsome deadpan offsets its skewering of class and sustainability issues, right through to a tricky ending that, like Bill himself, may not be what it seems.

Like its sad-sack main character, whose closed-off personality makes him hard to fully understand or sympathize with, The Happy Poet is too reservedly rough around the edges.

The consistent comic tone of those earlier scenes - a gentle squirm - makes The Happy Poet a promising debut.

Both subscribes to and somewhat departs from the bare-bones improvisational formula established by the mumblecore movement, sometimes sacrificing ambiguity for the sake of broader, telegraphed, one-note laughs.