VolcomAvenger Review of Mutual Appreciation

Mutual Appreciation (2005)

An offbeat comedy about a young musician and his new life in New York

[9/10 · 24 April 2005]

I saw this film yesterday at the Independent Film Festival of Boston and was pleasantly surprised. I just randomly picked it because i wanted to see something at the IFFB, and i loved the movie. Andrew Bujalski did a great job writing this conversion driven movie. The conversation felt so natural that I thought most of it was ad-libbed, but after the film he told us that while parts of the script were somewhat left open for ad-libbing, it was mostly written dialog. The main character, Alan (Justin Rice) has this wonderfully unique charisma, which really pulled me into the movie. Mr. Bujalski told us that much of that character was based on real life Justin Rice, and it came across well. I would definitely recommend checking out this movie if you can, especially for fans of Woody Allen, and it reminded me of Wes Anderson's work in some ways, probably just because of the characters.