How To Be

Currently turning teenage girls to jelly in the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson gives a decent stab (or should that be stake?) at another kind of existential angst in this low budget Brit flick. He plays Art, a privileged but depressed musician who manages to do all the things characters in these kinds of films always do: he loses his job, his girlfriend dumps him, his friends get bored with his whining and he moves back in with his folks (including Mrs David Mamet, Pidgeon). In order to better understand his situation and become “normal”, he hires a Canadian life coach (the late Powell Jones) and lets him in on every waking moment of his life. Director Irving has clearly been watching a lot of recent 'quirky' US indies, resulting in a film which looks wonderful, but lacks the grit and misanthropy of, say, Wes Anderson. The performers lack experience and the underwritten script is only ever mildly amusing. However, the potential of the undeniably talented filmmakers is very apparent.