Bravo and Gelman find a transcendent absurdity in the mundane that's awkwardly enchanting. It's more tart than sweet, but deliciously weird nonetheless.
Isaac's trashy identity -- including how the little world he lives in is punctuated by overwhelming choral music -- is like all the annoying sad-white-dude-in-an-indie tropes rolled into one absurd character. That's a good thing.
It's the work of a filmmaker who has been honing her own jarring, idiosyncratic sense of rhythm and character for years. As a debut feature, it feels auspicious; as a snapshot of a masculine emergency, it feels timeless.
A hack sitcom-complete with lame jokes about talent agents and commercial auditions and an overbearing Jewish family composed mostly of character actors-trying its hardest and loudest to come off as freakish and off-putting.
Lemon by Chuck Bowen 1.5 Stars Self-absorption is Janicza Bravo's focus, though--as in other smug and mock-ironic comedies--it's a topic that's less examined than indulged.
Beyond deadpan, beyond drollness, beyond absurdity, lies Lemon, a "comedy" so uniquely off-kilter that it's never exactly clear when, or why, one should laugh-and when one does, it often occurs long after a given gag.
[Lemon] has some legitimately peculiar traits, and moments that flash with true absurdity. But there's a flatness in the end-result. The quirky is utterly predictable.
