Movie Review Monday #38: Humble Pie

I watched Humble Pie with my friend Erin a couple nights ago. You may remember Erin as the winner of the First Ever Lobster Contest. She's obviously the best guesser ever. She's also pretty freaking nice too! She's also an aspiring teacher, so we decided not to watch Chalk, which is supposedly about the pitfalls of being a teacher. Anyway, Humble Pie follows a 400+ pound man who works in a grocery store as he starts to change his life a bit by taking an acting class and befriending a group of teenagers. Thoughts:


1. This felt so real that I wondered where they found the main actor. Did they see him in a supermarket and ask if he'd like to star in a film? Maybe. (Note: I just checked it out on my BFF imdb, and apparently he wrote the film. So I guess no one found him. He found himself. Deep.)
2. His sister is played by Mary Lynn Rajskub, who played Chloe on 24 and whose name I just spelled right on the first try. I love her. She is delightfully quirky, and continued that streak in this film, though she was sweeter than most of the other characters I've seen her play. She has over 100 stuffed animals, each with first and last names, and she loves her brother.

3. There was a very Napoleon Dynamite type quality about the film. Weird people who seem real. Awkward moments punctuated by moments when I felt extreme sympathy for the characters. Bad hair. The works. (Note: Another tidbit from imdb. This dude wrote both Humble Pie and Napoleon Dynamite. So the parallel is really not a good observation.)
4. Billy Baldwin was in this. Why is he always such a skeezy character? Actually, I think he ends up not totally skeezy at the end of this, but I wasn't sure because he is a perma-skeez in my head and I didn't trust that he was actually good.
5. I loved the ending. The big guy reads a poem he's written to a girl with whom he's always butted heads. It's a beautiful poem, and I expected their relationship to take a turn. Instead she thoughtfully says that she doesn't like it. Hilarious and surprising.


In conclusion, I give this 1.5 claws up. It wasn't the most amazing film of my life, but it was an altogether enjoyable 1.5 hours.