Highball

Highball is another Noah Baumbach film, except that it is credited to Ernie Fusco. I found this out only after we watched it and were searching the credits for Baumbach's name. Who the heck is Ernie Fusco? I said. Joe looked it up on the internet, which is substituting for his and everyone else's memory these days, and it confirmed that Ernie Fusco was Baumbach. He had shot Highball on a shoestring with his famous friends improvising, in only six days. And in spite of the fact that the film looks and feels like it was shot in six days, it was a lot funnier than Mr. Jealousy. Baumbach's usual stylistic tics are here, like the use of quick jumpcuts that look like stutters, which seem like a mistake everytime it happens, except that it happens so often. It's dialogue heavy and seems like a stageplay, especially since the camera often frames two-shots from the knees up, for whole scenes, without any close-ups, shot/reverse shots, or any other edits. But there are some genuinely laugh-out-loud scenes which occur when the cast lets loose into serious wackiness, like a great gag with two giant lizard suits, or a falsetto karaoke rendition of Beautiful Dreamer.