People, Places, Things หัวใจว้าวุ่น คุณพ่อเลี้ยงเดี่ยว (2015) [บรรยายไทย]

Jemaine Clement is just one of those inexplicable guys: With few physical assets in his favor, and with the low-energy demeanor of someone who could be really stupid, Clement nevertheless comes off as a charming, attractive guy. A smart and funny one too.

Known primarily as a comedian and co-star of the TV show “Flight of the Conchords,” Clement gets a well-deserved chance to be a romantic leading man in People Places Things (an unfortunate title that could fit any movie or story but has no particular relevance to this one). He plays a comic-book artist named Will Henry who lives in a Brooklyn townhouse with his longtime girlfriend Charlie (Stephanie Allynne) and their adorable daughters, Clio and Collette (real-life twins Aundrea and Gia Gadsby). The film opens as Henry scoots about the house preparing a party for the girls’ fifth birthday, and when he can’t find their mother, he goes upstairs and innocently bursts in on Charlie and their mutual friend Gary (Michael Chernus) in a state of dishabille—having just had sex.




 

When next we meet Henry, it is a year later and he’s living alone in an apartment in Astoria, Queens, working on a graphic novel whose hero reflects the stalled state of Henry’s own life. Or, as he tells the would-be artists/writers in the class he teaches at the School of Visual Arts, “Life sucks.” That’s an especially valid statement after Henry goes to Brooklyn to pick up the girls—their visits are the only thing that keeps him going—and learns Charlie is pregnant with Gary’s baby and plans to marry him.

Thanks to Henry’s drollery and Charlie’s ditziness—and thanks mainly to those irrepressible children—the emotional turmoil in People Places Things never gets too heavy. In fact, much of the movie is upbeat and even joyful: When Henry takes his daughters on a surprise camping trip, for instance, or when one of Henry’s best students, Kat (Jessica Williams), invites Henry to dinner to meet her “hot” mother, Diane (Regina Hall.) Of course, Henry and Diane’s first date doesn’t go well, and Henry gets sidetracked for a while when he entertains the false hope he can win back Charlie. But none of the plot twists here seem forced or false, and all the characters exhibit an easy humor and gentle acceptance of life as it unfolds with all its crazy kinks. They seem, in fact, just like the rest of us. 

Hey, wait a minute. Maybe People Places Things isn’t such a bad title after all.