Table For Three (2009/Anchor Bay DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C
The
houseguest(s) from hell story is one that is hard to not do with some
amusement, though most of the films that try it never seem to totally pull off
the finer points of the story. However,
there are still enough amusing moments in the otherwise average Table For Three shows that Brandon
Routh (Superman Returns, Zak & Miri Make A Porno) has a gift
for comedy and is one of the reasons this is not worse.
He plays
a guy who finds himself single after a long time and not very happy about it,
but it is about to get worse when after meeting many toxic and dysfunctional
people, settles a wacky couple (Jesse Bradford, Sophia Bush) who intend to
“help” him out, but instead of course are ruining, monopolizing and being
endlessly inappropriate for the whole time.
Can he get rid of them? How long
will he put up with them? Will he kill
them?
Unfortunately,
Writer/Director Michael Samonek cannot make most of this, is lucky to have the
actors he has and through shear inexperience misses endless opportunities to
make this funnier. The substitute is
desperate punctuation of “gross jokes” and other obvious humor that kills this
slowly but surely. Even John Galecki
from The Big Bang Theory cannot save
this, but we have seen worse and you could do worse. Too bad we are talking settling for second
best when this could have been better.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft and not always engaging, but is
on the clean side, despite being on the soft side. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is not great, with
rare surrounds, usually filled with the score and mostly dialogue-based
moments. Extras include a feature length
audio commentary track by the director that does not say much, a trailer and a
making of featurette.
- Nicholas Sheffo
