Tiny Furniture

2010 comedy drama

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 11/20)

Plot: A college graduate with eyes on being a Youtube sensation returns home where she tries to figure out something to do.

This is a tiny review.

Edit (5/29/15): I've decided to go into more detail about this movie, Tiny Furniture. These characters seem like they might inhabit the same neighborhoods as some of Wes Anderson's characters. The biggest difference is that none of them are likable. Writer/director/star Lena Dunham is mopey, and I'm not really sure if she just isn't as clever or as funny as she thinks she is or if she was playing a character who wasn't as clever or as funny as she thought she was. Either way, I didn't connect with the character at all. Her mother and younger sister aren't likable, and neither are the love interests. Alex Karpovsky plays a character who doesn't seem to matter at all, and he reminds me of David Schwimmer, only more pretentious and less likable. The funniest bits were provided by Dunham's quirky friend played by Jemima Kirke. I liked her character somewhat, and I like that name. Jemima. There aren't enough Jemimas out there.

This is firmly in that style of independent comedy where nothing really happens. It's kind of a coming-of-age movie, yet the character is too old for that kind of nonsense. She returns home from college, flounders, seems really pathetic, and has sex with a guy, pathetically. I might have been bothered about nothing happening with this character, but I never really cared what happened to her. She never gave me a reason to.

It's possible that I would have gotten more out of this if I could have connected with the protagonist's experiences more or if I were a woman. Watching this with almost no expectations, I thought there was potential with Dunham. I don't know anything about the TV series Girls. Part of me, however, just kind of feels old and out of touch when I think about this movie. These characters Dunham is creating are of a different generation than me, and I like that generation even less than I like my own or the one that came before mine. Maybe that's why I didn't care for this at all.