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Director Sven Pape’s feature-length debut puts Hollywood through the wringer. The audience, too. Two lackluster characters, Lenny (Zack Ward) and Ethan (Tony Daly), decide that collaborating on a movie will turn their lives around. Lenny wants to act, but he hasn’t mastered the Hollywood art of connections. Ethan, lost and newly single, moves into Lenny’s apartment in LA. Depressed and disillusioned, the duo throw themselves into the filmmaking process and challenge the Hollywood system. Pape satirizes sadistic agents and sketchy investors, all of whom are looking to sink their teeth into star-struck novices. Lenny and Ethan nonetheless persevere and fulfill their dream. It’s very inspiring — unlike the dialogue, particularly Ethan’s, which is excruciatingly trite. Even the cliché’d play-within-a-play device is executed so ineptly that it’s impossible to tell what’s real from what isn’t, especially since you probably don’t care. My advice to these dreamers: give up. (92 minutes)
BY MIRIAM LAMEY
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