TinsHeadline Touches You

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Mike B This is amusing and has a few moments, but no laugh out loud moments during this film.The story is of a comedy cast trying to make it in the competitive New York market.It does digress and veers off track – sometimes becoming overly melodramatic. There's a love relationship, one of the cast has a dying father, another meets up with a high school sweet-heart who is pregnant. If it would have stuck to the nightly comedy routine and the tensions within the group it would have been more unified. So after awhile what exactly are we left watching? Never felt very engaged by any of the characters.The ending is overly schmaltzy with all participating in a group hug, but in the prior scenes there were fierce and combative arguments...Good for a quiet weekday evening.

reumann There is always someone out there that is going to say a certain movie is great simply because it has that "artsy" or "independent" feel to it, regardless if the movie is good or not. That is the only reason this movie can have the overly generous rating it has.I get that it's not a comedy, but shouldn't at least the few improv scenes they show be mildly funny? OK so I got over that I wasn't going to laugh at all during the movie, but then for a drama it was simply flat and boring. I never felt anything for the characters, even though the acting wasn't bad. The "commune" actors didn't seem to have a believable chemistry to where you really felt for them.I grasped that the movie wasn't really plot-driven and its intent was to show struggling actors and how they deal with things like selfishness, self doubt, compassion, etc., but I just found the presentation of it a big yawner.

James De Bello The Commune is a comedy improvisational that performs in a small theater in New York. With Jack (Keegan Michael-Key), one of the six friends on the group, being hired by a big time comedy TV show and their theater being sold away in a matter of four weeks, the Commune and all of its members start to realize that their lives might be changing in a way they don't like and can't control.Portraying the comedy scene intimately and bringing to life a varied cast of quirky and beautiful characters, "Don't Think Twice" is a heartfelt, touching comedy that combines laughter with a deep insight into creativity, a small indie film made with real passion behind it and with some remarkable craft in writing and directing to support it.Being a man of many talents definitely helped Mike Birbiglia in putting this film together and he shows it in many different ways. He just nails the feel of the group and its dynamics, he manages to really bring to life on screen 'The Commune' with all of its quirky individuals and the internal group relationships which make the film as funny and as interesting as it is.Many time during the film he manages to hold on performances and little moments and the cast emerges with small touches that make a whole scene worth the watch. The way in which jealously and conflict or peace between characters is hinted at with body postures, timing in the blocking or the orchestration of eye movement is majestic, these are all small details that are the difference between great and good scenes and this film has many great ones.The improv performances are incredibly vital to the structure of the film and they are gold mines of visual storytelling. So much of how the characters move or what they do manages to build their archs and complement the story, most amazing of all is that even with that they still manage to be funny performances that really sell the artistic medium being portrayed. So many times in movies there is an integral part of them that presents a world of craftsmanship and so many times that world is not given a dignified portrayal or at least one that presents the medium in a convincing and clear way to the audience.Well, that's not the case here, you manage to really participate into the art the characters are involved in, everything about it is genuine and the world around is built beautifully. More than that you manage to directly see the impact of the art on these characters' lives and how it affects differently each one of them.The discussion that this film opens on creativity and artistic fulfillment is really special, it isn't glamorous or sugar coated, it doesn't ask questions without giving answers and most of all it doesn't fall into clichés. Everything it brings up about it is right, honest and moving. It is truthful to every individual presented in the film, all of them have the pay off they deserve and what ultimately this film says is that it does not matter how successful you are in something, what matters is your happiness in doing that.The cast is magic, they succeed in bringing to life this group in a genuinely likable way, you fall in love with all of them and it takes not even ten minutes of the film for you to be able to distinguish them all in their look and their characteristics, that is something insanely rare to find in features and this one does excels in it. Kate Micucci was a stand out for me, her casting is perfectly on point, yet, even more than her Gillian Jacobs gave a powerhouse of a performance. I think that not many people are yet familiar with her, but in a few years we'll be all talking about her talent. After 'Love' and this she has put out in a single year two of my favorite performances of the year. She manages to live her character entirely on screen, other than all of the comedic stuff that she pulls off she also sells the dramatic side and brings to the screen probably the most interesting character.The camera-work and the editing are both remarkable too. Firstly, the camera manages to capture some really intimate moments with incredible simplicity but effectiveness, it might be that the performers are so good on screen, but by keeping the camera movement simple and complementary to the story we manage to get moments of really big emotional scope. Then we have the editor putting this together so fluently, paced with relentless flow and with really smart choices on when to cut a scene or a montage.Overall what this film partially lacks is a stronger dramatic heart. Whilst tonally it manages to be seamless thanks to really good plot development, it does not have a climactic turn of events that manages to make the viewer captivated by the turn out. It could be said that the film does not need that kind of structure, but I felt that it might have done with some more development in the dramatic side since the pay off on that note doesn't really hit you as hard as it could.But that's enough meandering on flaws, "Don't Think Twice" is a glorious dramatic comedy with one of the best ensembles and combinations of characters to actors I have seen all year, a genuine and touching message for all artists and creatives out there, a really special gem of the indie world and a fantastic underground film on the New York comedy scene.

Veteransson Don't think twice follows the lives of a group of actors playing in an improv group in New York City. They're not just colleagues, but have formed a friendship and together, sitting on and around the same couch they watch Weekend Live (read Saturday Night Live) and hope to one day become part of the talented pool of people working on the TV show. When one member of the group gets picked up by Weekend Live, the groups' friendship is put at the test.Trying to make it is the central theme of this movie. Writer, director and actor Mike Birbiglia successfully depicts the motivation behind this inner desire to make it in the comedy business, which helps you understand why some feelings of jealousy arise when that one person actually makes it. When the subject comes up, you can feel the tension in the air, you can feel that some friends simply don't grant this person his/her success. What makes this movie great is that we actually understand these feelings of jealousy. The other members aren't jealous for the sake of being jealous, they start to realize they might not make it after all, maybe they aren't good enough, they start to question their future.Throughout the entire movie, you feel like you're watching real people and not just characters. This is thanks to the great directing, writing and acting of the entire cast. The most interesting character was the one Birbiglia plays himself, Miles. He's an improv teacher and there are some great contradictions between his life and passion for improv. He has a routine life, comes back home with the same kind of girls, tells the same joke to each one of them and seems to be stuck in his routine. There's everything but improvisation in his life. Watching his character develop and handle his frustrations was an interesting aspect of the movie. Birbiglia's talent as a writer becomes again very clear in a scene near the end of the movie, between Jack and Samantha (Keegan- Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs), that has a lot of emotional power and contains some clever double meaning. Unfortunately, there are also some flatter characters that didn't add much to the movie. Some dialogues and scenes didn't build the character they intended to do. Also, the ending of the movie worked, made sense, but somehow felt too easyNevertheless, 'Don't Think Twice' is a wrongfully overlooked movie because it's so relatable to anyone with a dream. Making it isn't a given and realizing it might as well never happen can be devastating. On the other hand, as one character shows, some people don't have to make it to be happy.