The Extra Man Reviews

For many years, I kept hearing from 2 of my favorites Listal members (the giraffe and Xanadon’t) that this movie was some kind of cult-classic so I was really eager to watch the damned thing. Furthermore, I really loved ‘American Splendor’ which was Shari Springer Berman’s  and Robert Pulcini’s directing debut so I had some high hopes. Well, to be honest, even though this movie was not bad at all, I can’t say I was really blown away though. I mean, the relationship between Paul Dano’s and Kevin Kline’s characters really had some potential and the damned thing was sometimes actually quite hilarious but I’m afraid they pushed the quirkiness way too far and it made it for me rather difficult to really care for these characters. For example, was it really a good idea to make Louis Ives a cross-dresser? I mean, I have nothing against a character struggling with the fact that he wants to dress as a woman but, in this movie, they kept adding layers upon layers of quirky stuff and, as a result, I had a hard time to take the whole thing really seriously. At least, it was much better than the terribly underwhelming ‘The Nanny Diaries’ from the same directors. Anyway, to conclude, even though it turned out to be slightly disappointing, it was still a decent watch though and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.