A small movie with a big, generous heart, it never makes fun of its characters, even the guy who trots around Hollywood in a diaper, or the dude dressed up like a big baked potato.
Though it's not exactly brilliant, this indie romcom is passably charming, and it finds offbeat atmosphere in an uncharted corner of Hollywood: scuzzy places where the glamorous would fear to tread.
Montiel treats his story's happily unsung oddballs with sincere affection. He doesn't hold them up to ridicule, or insist that they snap out of their quirkiness and conform. But he doesn't quite know what to do with them.
The Clapper hints at the psychological roots of Eddie's peculiar personality, but in the end it isn't at all interested in understanding the man. And that's because it's too busy making fun of him.
The movie is a less assured version of Shira Piven's Welcome to Me, in which she and Kristen Wiig unleash the full neurotic potential of the "15 minutes of fame" expression. The Clapper only pays lip service to it.
