Bob Byington unceremoniously walks us through the months leading up to a professor’s death in his latest cynical feature, Lousy Carter. While it features an ensemble of lovable nerds fit for a classic black comedy, it leans more toward the pretension it tries to avoid and lacks substance despite its hyper-academic tone. It picks apart the failings and regrets of one Mr. Lousy Carter (David Krumholtz), while offering little to garner our sympathy for him as he falls deeper into a state of self-sabotage.
Lousy, at a routine doctor’s appointment, jokes poorly with the medical staff before receiving news that due to a terminal illness found during testing, he has just six months to live. Along with this grim prognosis, he is informed by an unconcerned receptionist that he also owes thousands of dollars in medical bills, evidence of the script’s mean-spirited “pile-it-on” approach. Lousy teaches a graduate course on The Great Gatsby and its cultural impact, and the film vaguely parallels the structure of Fitzgerald’s novel. Lousy also makes an attempt to revive his career as an animator by working on a film adaptation of a lesser-known Nabokov work.
Lousy’s colleagues, students, family members and companions all seem fairly indifferent to his very existence and the news of his impending demise. Russian literature professor Kaminsky (Martin Starr) proclaims himself Lousy’s best friend, but he’s really his biggest critic — not in a constructive way, but more in a “you’ll never live up to your past success” kind of way. Professor Carter’s ex, Candela (Olivia Thirlby) writes off her former lover as nothing more than a narcissistic man-baby, which is an accurate assessment that reflects how pretty much everyone feels about him. Audiences will likely feel the same way. There’s definitely a stripped-down honesty in the film’s presentation of Lousy’s many, many faults, but this transparency can’t make up for the static emotional arc. Can someone change in the face of death? Does death lend meaning to life, or is it the ultimate proof of life’s meaninglessness? These are interesting questions that may pop into your mind while this film meanders bleakly along, answering nothing. The plot’s culmination doesn’t bring out any complexities in its characters, and the world created is drab and hyper-academic to a point that is almost satirical, but the satire never dares to subvert its own arrogance.
Things briefly look up for Lousy when he decides against being intimate with one of his graduate students, Gail (Luxy Banner), a rare bit of unpredictability in a fairly simple script. Gail acts as the muse for Lousy’s animated film, which is set to the same lo-fi hip-hop as the score for Lousy Carter. The editing style of Mr. Carter’s opus heavily mirrors that of Byington’s as well, which gives it a cohesion as if both were written and directed by Lousy Carter himself. And there are moments where Gail does challenge Lousy’s one-dimensional sleaziness, which prove to be some of the more stimulating aspects of the film, but as the plot runs its course, such well-meaning criticism comes too late for Lousy to absorb or act upon her words.
Essentially a film where nothing happens, or rather where so much is happening that has zero effect on anyone involved, Lousy Carter doesn’t have much more to say than Lousy’s talking points about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his influence on Instagram. It has a cool nonchalance prevalent in the editing, dialogue and overall morbid tone, but it’s hard to say that it achieves anything more than making nihilists out of all of us.
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
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