The Puffy Chair Reviews

This is the movie I hope for every time I roll the dice on an obscure indie flick. Alarmingly simple in scope and story, like a piece of sublime poetry, The Puffy Chair takes the mundane and turns it into the extraordinary. It works mostly within the confines of a roadtrip plot, and focuses on a trio of 20- somethings with a sense of direction in life as questionable as your average mapquest results. This state of confusion and uncertainty is not treated with an indulgent sense of superiority or faux-sympathy, however. Rather, our young film-makers tackle the story with a remarkably authentic-feeling, fragile sense of wisdom. There are lessons to be learned here, having to do with where we place importance, how to recognize and be true to ourselves, and how, if we open ourselves up, a single, multi-state car ride can propell us to the inevitable conclusion to a chapter of our lives that may ordinarilly have taken months of pretending and heartache to reach. This is a film that values honesty over pretention at every turn and penetrates the complexities of the characters, making it truly seem as though they were real people who've lived real lives before the camera switches on and continue to live after the credits have rolled. The moments of comedy don't rely on script, but rather on our recognition of ourselves, of our friends in these characters. By the same token, the moments of small, pointed tragedy are equally effective. If you're looking for a hip, edgy movie filled with idealized dialogue and cute, pithy irony then this is not your movie. If you want an unassuming little story that captures the small dramas that we all live with unnerving clarity and realism then look no further.