Review

Comet

Emmy Rossum (Kimberly) and Justin Long (Dell) in Sam Esmail’s COMET.  Copyright Comet Movie, LLC.  An IFC Films release.
Emmy Rossum (Kimberly) and Justin Long (Dell) in Sam Esmail’s COMET. Copyright Comet Movie, LLC. An IFC Films release.

Brightly written, the (essentially) two-character romantic comedy Comet has no difficulty exceeding the relatively low expectations a seasoned moviegoer is likely to hold for it.

Emmy Rossum will be familiar to those who watch Showtime's Shameless (though, before this film, her best movie role was as a young orphan in 2000's Songcatcher), and we might be forgiven in believing that her casting here has at least something to do with her being married to its rookie director Sam Esmail. As for the film's other major component, veteran rising star Justin Long has graduated from making bad high school comedies to middling adult ones. (While his recent turn in Kevin Smith's Tusk is too bizarre to qualify as a genuine comeback, it is indicative of an interesting taste.)

Comet

87 Cast: Emmy Rossum, Justin Long. Eric Winter, Kayla Servi

Director: Sam Esmail

Rating: R, for language including sexual references and some drug use

Running time: 91 minutes

Just so you understand -- this is a small movie, with a low budget, that's barely being released theatrically. It's not supposed to be one of the best movies of the year.

And it isn't. But it's an awful lot better written than, say, The Theory of Everything, and though you'd probably have to take Eddie Redmayne over Long in their matchup, Rossum and Felicity Jones (who'll probably get an Oscar nomination for her role) are basically a wash. That's not to say The Theory of Everything isn't a better movie than Comet (although it isn't), I just want to point out this little movie punches above its weight. It's really enjoyable.

It doesn't completely hold together, in part because it insists on making Long's character, Dell, one of those kinds of scientists -- you know, the kind you see in the movies, sort of on the spectrum (though not as socially awkward as Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game) and grandly superior while secretly nursing an inferiority complex. That cliche is really beneath the rest of this film, which is essentially the cut-up story of a relationship -- six signal moments in the life of a love affair cut together out of chronological order.

We watch as Dell and Kimberly (Rossum) meet cute, and ping-pong somewhat overwritten but nevertheless true-feeling observations over the course of serial breakups and reunions. Dell falls for Kimberly the moment he sees her (she's lovely if somewhat prim early on; later she evolves into a wilder, freer version -- she literally takes off her spectacles) and she's intrigued by the brainy, mildly misanthropic dude who can't live in the moment because he's so preoccupied with "the five minutes from now."

What's beautiful about the film is the obvious chemistry the characters have for each other, which allows us to indulge them even when the dialogue turns mystical. Though it's harder to buy the boyfriend who's squiring Kimberley when she first meets Dell -- he's an idiot who prattles on about how the Beatles were better with Pete Best and how soccer will surpass football as the American game within two years. Woody Allen constructed better straw men in Annie Hall, a film that I bet Esmail, Rossum and Long all love and maybe even thought about on set.

While I'm not sure Comet sustains itself for the full 91 minutes, it is impressively smart and well-paced, and its structure allows us to interpret its episodes as actual events, alternate histories or wishful dreams. It has a sweet, easy rhythm. It portends even better work ahead. You leave the theater feeling good about all those involved.

This isn't the one that wins an Oscar for anybody. But this is the one that someday some lunkhead will point to and say "they were better back then."

MovieStyle on 12/12/2014

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