As a general rule (and I’ve said this several times before in previous reviews) I’m not an altruistic comedy film watcher. On occasion I will enjoy them, but the times are few and far between when I’ll plunk myself in front of a big or small screen to catch one.

But How Sweet It Is (via HSII co-writer and CliqueClack contributor Jay Black) piqued my curiosity. This was as good a time as any for a “once in a blue moon” venture into comedy, I figured. And with it being a musical to boot? Well, a little added bonus to wrap my head around.

When I read the premise of the film (“An alcoholic theater owner needs to put together a successful musical in order to pay off his mob debt, but problems arise when the wise guys want to cast their friends in the production”) I figured it could either go one of two ways: Pure cheese-fest or surprisingly workable. I wasn’t planning on getting a little bit of both. Throw in the sidelines of a father/daughter reconnection and some emotional interjection and there was more … well … just keep reading …

Did the premise work? Joe Piscopo, playing down-on-his-luck Jack Cosmo, pulls off some nice lines and workable scenes when he goes mano a mano with mafioso Big Mike (Paul Sorvino). The supporting cast solidly works off each other with the majority of their well-placed zingers and one liners hitting the mark. (We can thank Jay Black’s years on the comedy circuit — along with fellow writer and director Brian Herzlinger — for those spots gelling as well as they did.) I’ll point out, however, many of the comedic elements were realized in the trio of Big Mike’s son (also a Mike played by Michael Paré) and mooks Greg (Steven W. Bailey) and Tim (Steven Chase, the late Jack Klugman’s cousin as it turns out). During the auditions, I actually guffawed several times as Jack began putting his show together. The sight of the little person who came out with a dummy was enough to get me chuckling, but the unexpected ending to his particular audition is the reason I was glad I wasn’t drinking anything at the time. (One of those guffaw moments.) And Jonathan Slavin as “methed up” crackhead Clifton was over-the-top funny throughout. So yes … the premise worked in that regard.

Additionally, there were build-up side stories between Jack and his daughter Sarah as well as she and rookie FBI agent Ethan that mostly held water as the film progressed.

Where things got messy was at the culmination of the musical production Cosmo put together during the last 20 minutes or so of the film. It was just this side of painful. The numbers brought on the cheese-fest I’d been looking for at the start … and at full bore. Actually, I got a whiff of things to come when Jack pulled out a little mini showpiece early on giving Ethan a taste of Jack’s history. Still, the interlude wasn’t that bad … a typical “jazz hands” number. But “the show” in and of itself wasn’t my cup of tea … and I suspect it didn’t go down well in many others’ cups, either.

To be fair, there was spectacle in the song and dance performances. And there was scenery. And effort. There was even some emotion tossed in for good measure. But the sum of all these parts didn’t add up to a razzle-dazzle showcase worthy of the cheers Big Mike was kudoing its way.

In many respects, How Sweet It Is aped some of the best elements of a mob comedy, Analyze This for example. (I would go so far as to also note there were nods to The Sopranos on several levels, not the least of which was Sopranos alum Louis Lombardi being one of the more obvious ones, despite the fact he was on the other side of the fence as an FBI agent.) But the film lost me during the finale — the payoff of Jack’s number stumbled and came up short.

But I’m not letting it spoil the fact I saw some spiffy talent and laugh-out-loud worthy interplay throughout.

How Sweet It Is debuts in New York, Los Angeles and Bergen County, NJ (!) Friday, May 10th.

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So, first, a little context. I wrote a movie with my writing partner, Brian Herzlinger. It’s called How Sweet It Is and it’s out in select theaters this Friday.

Our first review came in from The Village Voice and even though it was less-than-favorable, I was still pretty excited. I mean, The Village Voice! Not only are they a venerated institution, they’re the same people who own backpage.com! That’s where I go to hire all my … ahem. Let’s move on.

Reading Chris Packham’s review of my movie was a letdown, though, and not because it was critical. Listen, I started doing stand-up in Northeast Philly, I wrote for TV Squad, and I’m married to an Italian woman: I can take criticism. The pain receptors in my soul were burnt out a long time ago.

I was upset because the review was so … bad. I mean, it was a poorly-written review. Reviewing is something I know about, because over the course of four years at TV Squad, I churned out something like a quarter of a million words of television criticism. Not all of it was good — I remember a really tortured opening sentence that tried to draw a line from Mark McGwire’s 70 home-run season to an episode of Studio 60 that didn’t have Danny Trip in it — but I think my time there gave me some insight as to what good work looked like.

And Chris Packham’s review wasn’t good work.

This frustrated me. Then I realized that his review maybe frustrated me the same way my movie frustrated him. I had a brainstorm: since he got a chance to review my movie, well, then, dammit, I’m going to review his review!

Because, what else is does the Internet exist except for cat videos and endless, narcissistic recursion?

First, take a look at The Village Voice article in question.

And now, reprinted in its entirety from the comments section of the article and my own Facebook page, is my review of Mr. Packham’s review of my movie:

Mr. Packham’s review is a pull-quote in search of an actual analysis. Granted, “extraordinarily undistinguished” is the kind of almost-nonsense that grabs you immediately, but he doesn’t manage to expand on that point at all. What’s striking about this is that the lack of analysis isn’t a result of the small word count — though, to be fair, it doesn’t look like Mr. Packham had more than a few hundred words to work with — but because he felt the need to pad the review needlessly with an overly-long and overwrought lede sentence. The result? Mr. Packham spends literally half the review trying to find a clever way to say that Joe Piscopo is old.

It’s arguable, I suppose, that Mr. Packham didn’t have much else to say about the film — that it was so undistinguished that he couldn’t bring himself to analyze it and decided, instead, to try to whip up something dazzling for his mediabistro resume. Even if we were to accept that premise, what we’re left with is the onus of the analysis being on the reader. Mr. Packham, you want to shout, this is a freelance writing gig, not an English Lit seminar!

Towards the end of the review, Mr. Packham manages to make some light points about the necessity of farce to bring to it “unhinged commitment” and that How Sweet It Is somehow failed to do that. There’s a nugget of a good idea in there that’s left unexplored by the review’s unnecessary, distracting stylistic flourishes. Mr. Packham’s review screams to the world (or, more specifically, to editors with rent checks in their vest pockets), “Hey, look at me!”, but instead of doing so with clear and cutting analysis, he does so with belabored humor and wheel-spinning. One hundred a fifty words shouldn’t take this long to read.

GRADE: C MINUS.

In an ideal world, you will use the comments section to review this review of Mr. Packham’s review. And then, maybe, if Mr. Packham gets wind of this, he’ll maybe come here to CliqueClack and review your review of my review of his original review. And so on until Neo sets us all free from the Matrix.

Thanks for reading! And please, if you’re in New York, Los Angeles, or Northern New Jersey: go see How Sweet It Is!

Or, at the very least, just follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

1. I’m doing the CliqueClack podcast, which is like “voice-writing” (which is what I’m sure it would have been called if Isaac Asimov had predicted podcasting in the 1950s).

2. I have a wife and kids who, despite my many protestations that I will most likely be like Judd Nelson’s dad from The Breakfast Club, still want me to “do stuff with them.”

3. I am lazy on a scale that can’t be fully comprehended via the written word (try listening to my voice-writing in the above link!).

4. I’ve been writing movies.

Now, it’s to that last point that I’m writing this little post. I won’t go into the whole history of the thing as that would take this thing into “full-fledged public masturbation” mode, but here’s the highlight: there will be a movie released next year that I wrote with Brian Herzlinger and that he directed.  It stars Paul Sorvino, Joe Piscopo, Eddie Griffin, Erika Christensen, Michael Pare, Louis Lombardi, Steven W. Bailey, and Erich Bergen. You can check out the trailer above.

Hopefully you’ll like it.  If you do, please post many comments to that effect (under several aliases!). If you don’t like it, please disconnect your keyboard until the urge to destroy my soul goes away. (Ah, you know what, now that I think about it, go ahead and post.  My soul is already pretty destroyed from years of stand-up comedy.  I don’t even know what my own laugh sounds like any more.)

Thanks for your time and hopefully I’ll be able to do my writing for CliqueClack soon!