After snapping his glasses in two, Mike sets off on a day of running into people he only kind of knows.
“Fendt’s comedies aren’t fashionably quirky or raunchy or arch, a far cry from the one-joke calling cards that clog up most festival shorts blocks. Structured as a series of gags around a single organizing principle, they perhaps best resemble silent comedy two-reelers, a debt Fendt openly acknowledges—Harry Langdon is thanked in the credits of his Shattered Sleep (2011), and its title is tellingly taken from Harold Lloyd. All five of his films to date present a single quotidian problem (often directly stated in the title)—unhappiness at work in Quitters Can’t Be Choosers (2011), a bedbug infestation in Shattered Sleep, a pair of broken glasses in Broken Specs, the need for a vacation in Travel Plans, finding a significant other in Going Out (2014)—and proceed to detail the ways in which the characters try (and usually fail) to solve them.”
C. Mason Wells1
- 1C. Mason Wells, "Between Things: The Off-Kilter Comedies of Ted Fendt," MUBI Notebook.
