Dark Horse

This is writer-director Todd Solondz’s sweetest, kindest movie to date—and it is still nastier than all hell. Jordan Gelber is Abe, an adult with a severe case of arrested development. He’s living in his dad’s house, collecting toys and lacking any sense of life direction. At a wedding, he meets a depressed Miranda (Selma Blair), asks her out, and promptly asks her to marry him. Things get stranger and nastier from there, because this is Solondz territory, and the maker of Happiness likes to make movies that are uncomfortable, evil and somehow funny. This is some of Solondz’s best moviemaking since Happiness. Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow also star as Abe’s parents, and they make a convincing married couple. This movie is sort of like The 40 Year Old Virgin, although things don’t go as smoothly for Abe as they did for the title character of that movie. Actually, scratch that … this movie is the exact opposite of The 40 Year Old Virgin.