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If Woody Allen were 40 years younger and had seen The Matrix one too many times, he could have done worse than to have made a debut feature like Jamie Hook’s The Naked Proof. Philosophy post-graduate Henry Rawitscher (Michael Chick, who depending on the angle looks like Woody Harrelson or David Letterman) is struggling to finish his PhD thesis, "The Origin of Others," whose aim is to prove that other people exist. He’s the "Cartesian curmudgeon" in a field full of jovial solipsists who remind him that he’s "alone in the universe . . . alone in the Philosophy Department." Already your eyes are glazing over. But wait: enter Arlette Del Toro, a kind of Janeane Garofalo in the Diane Keaton role of Miriam, a pregnant stranger who shows up at Henry’s doorstep, chips away at his faith in Descartes’s first two principles, and teaches him to have fun. Then there’s August Wilson in his movie debut — an extended Marshall McLuhan turn — as the Narrator who puts these big concepts and trivial affairs into genial, self-effacing perspective. Hook might settle on a middle-of-the road middlebrow ending worthy of Allen, but this bright, shrewd, funny gem is proof that he possesses a genius all his own. (96 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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