"Fantasy Life' written by and starring Matthew Shear, is a self-indulgent exercise in mental illness and self-medication. Shear is an American actor of TV and film ("Mistress America"). Shear wrote the screenplay for "Fantasy Life" in which he stars as Sam, an anxiety riddled, law school drop-out who takes a Manny job for his psychiatrist's three granddaughters. The girls mother, Diane (Amanda Peet) has her own low key depression which keeps her at a functional distance from her husband, daughters and apparent pleasures. Diane's husband, David (Alessandro Novola) is an aging rock star with a drinking problem. The only people who are happy in this weary, and off-putting film are the psychiatrists played by the consulate actors Judd Hirsch and Holland Taylor. It's no wonder, they're in constant demand for their services. While not providing cures, the psychiatrists provide Sam and Diana a tolerable haze of emotional resignation. Diane is an actress whose career is waining, her beauty fading and her sensibilities so muffled as to render her detached and lacking in any fervor. With Diane's affluent lifestyle, lovely homes in Manhattan and the Vineyard provide and animated girls, it becomes impossible to feel empathy for her first class woes. Sam is so feckless as to render him an annoying, sniveling sad sack. These neurotic characters, self-absorbed characters provide very little to ingratiate themselves into anything worth spending time with. Diane tells her current psychiatrist she left her previous one after 15 years because "It wasn't helping and I felt I was boring him." When her Dr. asks how she knew she was boring him she replied, "Some things you just know." I know that despite earnest performances from Peet and Shear, there's nothing there there but tepid neurosis. And, who cares cares?
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