Greenberg

**1/2 – I’m generally all for quirky characters in movies, but only if the quirkiness in the characters remains humorous and appealing enough to sustain them throughout the feature. In this latest offering from Noah Baumbach, the two lead characters are so unappealing that the brief bits of humor that they display are far overshadowed by their more irritating characteristics. Case in point: the lead female seems to be mildly retarded and have a Minnesota accent, but also frighteningly detached from reality and appallingly promiscuous. The male lead – played by Ben Stiller – is a clearly unstable sociopath who, while I can sympathize with some of his actions, is extremely cruel, belligerent and self-absorbed. In fact, all the characters in the movie seem very self-absorbed. I find people – whether movie characters or otherwise – who take themselves too seriously and think that everything they do is the most important thing in the world to be very annoying. Besides the character issues, the dialogue was a bit hit-and-miss, but it was well shot and looked fairly nice. The two graphic sex scenes in the film seemed oddly out of place and detracted from the overall package as well. This isn’t a bad movie at its core, but there was enough bad about it to cause me to have no interest in seeing it again.