Thursday
02Jul2009
Festival Movie Review - 'Man Overboard'
Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 6:25PM | Man Overboard
Starring Matthew Kaminsky, Mel Fair, Floyd Van Buskirk, and Jeffry Stein  |
Man Overboard is a comedy seemingly about a lot of things – family, business, money, friends, and
questioning all of them – but ultimately, when you step away from the film, it’s one idea that sticks with
you: There’s a reward in doing the right thing when the wrong thing might be the easier option.
It is a comedy with a moral, and sometimes those movies fall on their faces. A comedy is
supposed to make you laugh, first and foremost, and if it fails to do that, it doesn’t much matter what
else the movie has going for it. Where a lot of movies in this genre make their biggest mistake is in
focusing on just the jokes. When these jokes can’t be strung together by substance, not only aren’t people
laughing because the humor is so forced, but they also aren’t enjoying anything else about tonight’s
feature presentation.
In the case of Man Overboard, writers Ashley Scott Meyers and Nathan Ives have clearly based their movie
about the circumstances of believable characters. That takes the pressure off getting a laugh every minute
or two and developing a real story, and any laugh is better in context. We meet C.J. Mason (Matthew
Kamisnky), who runs his own used boat dealership. He does well enough to provide for his family, but he’d
obviously like to give them more. C.J. feels the sing of sluggish business and the expectations of his
father-in-law, who constantly pushes C.J.’s buttons.
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