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List Price: $19.95 | | Label: Genius Products (TVN)
Salesrank: 13641
Released: April 15, 2008 |
| Our Price: $12.49 |
| Used Price: $8.90 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin is James, a frustrated underappreciated Chicago actor who lives with his mother. James wants three things in life: someone to love him, a great part and to lose some weight. Unfortunately, he is 0 for 3. When he bails on Overeaters Anonymous for a trip to the ice cream parlor, he meets Beth who quickly wins his heart, but will this cause James more problems than it solves? Or has he finally found someone to eat cheese with? A brilliant ensemble cast makes this story of romance quite the comedy!
Description of I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With:
A romantic comedy with a meandering, almost conversational feel, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With is a movie about overweight actor James Aaron (Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin) who lives with his mother (Mina Kolb) and hasn't had a relationship with a woman in five years. Incredibly picky about the roles he plays, James hasn't landed many acting jobs recently either, although he is the host of a junk television show. Finding solace in conversations with his friend Luca (David Pasquesi) and through eating junk food, this societal misfit walks out of an Overeaters Anonymous meeting in search of satisfaction and meaning only to enter a random ice cream parlor where he encounters Beth (Sara Silverman), an oversexed woman who takes an immediate liking to him. Thoroughly smitten, James' initial ebullience soon fizzles out and his strange relationship with Beth throws a whole different light on a chance encounter with a jazz-fan and teacher (Bonnie Hunt) in a local record store. In the end, James achieves a certain degree of independence, but the viewer is left in doubt about his relative sense of happiness and fulfillment. --Tami Horiuchi
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With Reviews:
Life Sucking 
2008-07-08 - This movie starts off slow and you think it might get better but it never does it felt like the movie just suck the life out of me. Comedy it is NOT you end up feeling sorry and depressed after the movie. If you want to feel sorry and depressed this is your movie.
A Trifle Twee 
2008-06-09 - There isn't a lot of occasion to use the word "twee" these days. But that word, with its connotations of forced cuteness, does seem to fit this movie as a whole. Furthermore, each scene is like the movie's title - overly long and wandering, and ending with a weak-kneed preposition.
Jeff Garlin, costar of the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" TV comedy series, wrote and directed "Cheese," apparently using the same improvisational techniques that Larry David uses to distinguish "Curb." However, the results here are the opposite of the loose-limbed, double-jointed results in "Curb" where everyone seems cocked to take a jab in an unexpected direction. Here we just end up with a rambling and lame series of unfortunate events. If you like "Curb Your Enthusiasm," you probably won't like this - a wistful kite of a film that is simply let loose to rise into thin air.
Garlin uses the theme of "Marty" as the one hook that might have snagged the action. As he wanders through different Chicago settings, he tries to cast himself as a Marty character, an unpopular, somewhat unattractive (or so we are asked to presume) fellow, looking for love. He in fact hopes to audition for the lead in a re-make of Marty, the role he was born to play. However, even this promising theme ends in pointless improbability.
All the action here is too improbable to be funny or to allow us to identify with Garlin. For example, he shops at a large, surreally empty grocery store where the clerk/owner only stocks foods he likes - which means none of Garlin's favorite rice pudding goes on the shelves. In another scene, Garlin accompanies his would-be girlfriend as she strips bare in a boutique dressing room and tries on underwear. I don't know of any clothing store that would allow that. So again, the scene dissolves into ridiculous kookiness.
There's another moment where some edginess might have entered the picture - the moment when Garlin gets rejected by a young woman who had previously encouraged his affections. We might have gained some insight here into the games people play in their drive to exercise malicious power. But once more, this potential for something truer and deeper evaporates. The film cuts and disconnects to yet another wandering scene.
As a further disappointment, Garlin, who can be a colorful conversationalist, didn't provide any director's/writer's commentary on the DVD to help fill all these voids.
It all adds up to a lot of lost potential. The film could have been a chance to portray sweet, lovelorn yearnings - something the world needs to see again. In the end though, it's not so much about a man who wants someone to eat Swiss cheese with, as it's simply a slab of something full of holes.
Bizarre movie with unsatisfactory ending 
2008-06-02 - The physical quality of the product was fine; however the movie itself was uncommonly bizarre, with a completely unsatisfying ending - not just in comparison to mainstream movies, but even to independent movie standards. The movie on the whole would be at least marginally worthwhile if not for the abrupt ending that makes the picture appear like the production team just ran out of money. I can't say I would recommend the picture.
On His Own, Jeff Curbs His Enthusiasm
2008-05-16 - An amiable, if uneventful movie. Plot: struggling actor James Aaron (Garlin) wanders Chicago looking for a breakthrough in his love life and his acting career. Along the way, we meet some of the offbeat characters in his world, including a convenience store clerk (Dan Castellaneta), his mom (Dina Kolb), and his niece's grade school teacher (Amy Sedaris). For those who have watched Garlin on Curb Your Enthusiasm, you'll see many of that show's actors here. Also, he has a fling with Sarah Silverman, a restaurant worker whose character doesn't do anything particularly funny. Garlin acts in the movie as he is, I think, in real life: a passive, likeable, sweet guy. Silverman acts as I think she is in real life: a smiling she-devil. Together, they don't have much chemistry, which is probably why Garlin doesn't go for the easy Hollywood ending.
I Want Someone doesn't try too hard, which might be its biggest problem. But it's likeable. It's like a nice walk down Michigan Avenue on a spring day with a good friend. Nothing great happens, but nothing bad either.
There should be more movies like this. 
2008-05-12 - Like another reviewer noted, this is a modest effort, a small but thoughtful and satisfying movie, I wish there were more like it. It's clearly a labor of love for all involved and Jeff Garlin has an ingratiating screen presence, sympathetic without being totally pathetic. This movie makes some smart observations and manages some genuinely funny laugh out loud moments. It's perfect for a night at home.
