The Marc Pease Experience

This is a slight and unessential picture, but its quirky, compassionate tone seems destined to attract a cult following, and members of high-school drama clubs everywhere will be riveted.

Not so much character-driven as character-dragged--against its will.

Faced with the script's weak humor and feeble stabs at irony, Schwartzman and Stiller turn it way up, setting the dial at "hammy."

In a squandered lead performance, the adorable, winning Schwartzman plays the non-adorable, non-winning title character.

The finished product appears particularly stale, with an unfunny script that squanders its game cast, including a valiantly emotive Jason Schwartzman in the title role.

It’s badly written and inertly directed, with actors who don’t have a clue what drives their characters. This is one of those rare films that contains no chemistry at all. None. The actors scarcely seem to be in the same scenes together.

Those who deem the gentle comedies of Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show) cruel to showbiz dreamers should be subjected to this ugliness.