The 27-year-old protagonist of Steve Buscemi’s deadpan comedy “Lonesome Jim” lives out the worst nightmare of every bushy-tailed go-getter who moves to New York to Be Somebody (in his case, a writer) and fails miserably.
After eking out a living as a dog walker, Jim (Casey Affleck) skulks back to his parents’ home in rural Indiana with no idea of what to do next. As Robert Frost observed, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
In describing “Lonesome Jim,” I use the term comedy advisedly, since the subject of the movie is depression, and the movie’s sense of humor is only as broad as the Mona Lisa’s smile.
While Jim’s robotically perky mother, Sally (Mary Kay Place), makes a fuss over him, his father, Don (Seymour Cassel), greets him with a wary scowl. His deadbeat older brother, Tim (Kevin Corrigan), a divorced father of two young girls who lives at home at 34, is so consumed by disappointment that he barely acknowledges Jim’s return. When the brothers finally compare notes, Jim sweetly observes that he may be a mess but that Tim is a disaster. Tim responds by deliberately slamming his car into a tree and nearly dies.
Jim’s father pressures him to work on the assembly line in the family’s ladder factory, and before long, he gives in. There he meets Stacy, a.k.a. Evil (Mark Boone Junior), a scruffy, motorcycle-driving drug dealer and the only character in the movie who hasn’t fully succumbed to lethargy.
Jim also hooks up with Anika (Liv Tyler), a good-hearted nurse and the divorced mother of a smart young boy. Although their first sexual encounter is consummated in less than five seconds, Anika doesn’t seem to mind much and returns for more.
“Lonesome Jim” would be a stronger movie if Affleck bared more of the passive-aggressive rage inside a character who contemplates the world with a hangdog, poker-faced stare and drones his dialogue in a neutral monotone.
“Lonesome Jim” | ** RATING
R for sexual situations and strong language|1 hour, 31 minutes|DRAMA|Directed by Steve Buscemi; written by James C. Strouse; photography by Phil Parmet; starring Casey Affleck, Liv Tyler, Mary Kay Place, Seymour Cassel, Kevin Corrigan, Mark Boone Junior|Opens today at the Chez Artiste.