Somebody Up There Likes Me

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No, this is not the Paul Newman boxing movie from the ‘50s. It’s a wickedly funny black comedy about a guy stumbling through life without much of a plan and even less of a clue. Writer/director Bob Byington leads a wonderfully unique cast of newcomers and recognizable actors through the paces, with lots of wry humor and a little insight (very little, intentionally) into the vagaries of love.

Keith Poulson plays Max Youngman, who is literally that. Even though the story advances over a quarter-century, everyone else gets older while Max stays perpetually in a twentysomething bliss of moppish hair and hangdog mien.

He waiters at a high-end steakhouse called Flanagan’s, passive-aggressively insulting the patrons and goofing off with his pal Sal (Nick Offerman), who mixes avuncular and belligerent personality traits. As the story opens, Max is divorced but still holds a flame for his ex (Kate Lyn Sheil). But then he falls in with Lyla (Jess Weixler), a cute and daffy fellow server. Her dad (Marshall Bell) is a surly cop and cares not a wit for Max, but they make a go of it.

Byington keeps phasing the story five years forward, and fortunes change up and down haphazardly. At one point, Max finds himself fabulously wealthy, tooling around his mansion with Sal ensconced out back as a permanent guest and a hot little nanny (Stephanie Hunt) installed to watch over their son and cater to Max’s non-educational needs.

At a crisp 76 minutes, “Somebody Up There Likes Me” is a weirdly whimsical journey without much of a destination, but the ride is an acerbic delight.

There are all sorts of funny one-liners and asides, such as Sal’s observation, “Everybody in France has a house that belonged to their parents," or the two quasi-friends hooking up to start their own restaurant stand, dubbed “Pizza and Ice Cream” after their rather unadorned business model, and setting about tag-teaming to see who can upset their first customer the most.

Megan Mullally also pops up as a therapist whose dedication to her patients is somewhat shaky, and Kevin Corrigan is a guy who stops Max from stealing flowers from his mother’s roadside shrine.

Oh, and there’s a recurring bit about a battered old blue suitcase filled with heavenly light that Max guards as his eternal secret, sort of like a similar piece of luggage in “Pulp Fiction” and with just as much narrative disposition.

4.5 Yaps