Justin Theroux’s directorial debut is achipster/literary take on love marked by edgy cutting and quasi-Lynchian dreamlike sequences. Dedication is a modern love story about a misanthrope’s quest for meaning: Henry Roth (Billy Crudup) is a depressed (and depressing), Nike Dunk-wearing New York children’s book author who hates everything and has a deadline looming. When he’s not lying stricken on the floor with heavy objects on his chest or obsessively rearranging salt shakers at the local diner and bashing the waitress, he’s reciting clichéd nihilistic phrases on the pointlessness of everything. But when his collaborator (Tom Wilkinson) dies of a brain tumor, Henry is forced to get a new illustrator, (Mandy Moore), who turns out to be just the thing he needs in order to escape his ghosts and reckon with love and life. Billy Crudup plays the perfect hipster: he is neurotic, particular, elitist, and treats people like shit. He does it just well enough, in fact, that you almost believe having a smokin’ illustrator and a booming career means your life sucks. When Henry’s editor lends the duo his Long Island beach house for the weekend, romance blossoms as the two artists make mock-ups for books — think The Grinch dressed as a beaver — that will eventually top the bestseller list. And even though there’s a little too much star-gazing and baby talk, even for a teenybopper, one can’t deny that Crudup's hot, self-deprecating romaticism takes the cake. (Moore is just okay.) And yet besides Crudup’s impressive OCD twitching and ever-tortured soul — and the sweet non-conformist wooing, the arty cuts, the hip downtown lofts, the Deerhoof soundtrack — Dedication winds up looking like a teen movie veiled as a David Lynch praise piece.
Opens August 24
Opens August 24
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