In Meeting Spencer Jeffrey Tambor plays Harry Chappell, who after an unsuccessful stint in Hollywood, returns to the Big Apple to seek funding for a play meant to cure his bruised ego and bring him back to the top of Broadway’s leading directors. In one night, while dining at the theater hang out Frankie and Johnnie’s, he encounters a slew of forgettable characters who weave in and out of the film blandly and inconsequentially. This film has the makings for a good comedy about fame and the ritzy cocktail-drinking New York City theater scene, but ultimately it doesn’t quite hit the mark it set for itself.
Meeting Spencer starts off promisingly enough. It begins with Harry and his friend Didi meeting up for dinner outside Frankie and Johnnie’s where a young man approaches Harry, and before he can say anything, Harry dismisses him thinking him a homeless beggar. Moments later Harry realizes the young man outside is actually the title character, an aspiring actor Harry invited to have dinner and talk shop. Here the film creates a misunderstanding, but nothing happens – they just sit down and start ordering from the waiter as if it never even happened, and you wonder what was the point of that misunderstanding then.
Several times the film does this: It sets up for a story opportunity, but never sees it through, or at least never pushes itself to be more than just a simple one-liner or gag. There is a brief intimate moment that reveals a failed love affair between Harry and Didi, but it’s never mentioned again and seems to be of no consequence to the characters, as if it was never even brought up. So again, what’s the point?
Even when the film hits its climax, nothing of consequence occurs as one would expect. When a few of the characters discover that the man who is thought to have the millions needed to finance Harry’s play is only an acting student trying to weasel his way into the production, the problem is quickly and easily resolved. There’s no period of drama in which the characters endure various hardships as they scramble towards a resolution. One minute they realize the play is lost, the next minute a man at the bar we hardly get to know decides he’s interested in investing in a Broadway production. And like that: problem uninterestingly solved. Constantly, the film creates an opportunity to open up the story, but never sees it through, at least not in any entertaining fashion.
The writing even fails to make full use of some of the characters, to make them more than just figures in the background and easy devices to move the story along. For instance, when the biggest talent agent stops by the restaurant, she’s introduced and then more or less forgotten till she decides at the end of the film to represent Spencer after he just nabbed the leading role in Harry’s production. So her only function is to show the viewers through this business transaction that the fledgling actor has made it – Hurrah! But that is not nearly enough to make a gripping film, when characters are pretty much pieces of furniture set about the scenery until the story requires more of their presence to resolve some matter.
Meeting Spencer wants to be more. The way the characters tend to hop around the restaurant, from the bar to the table to the bathroom and back, you can sense it wants to be wild, frantic, and clever, with the twists and turns seen in great stage plays. And it could have been, with a basic story that sets up for it, but because of the limitations in the script and the directing, it only goes as far as being a 90-minute sitcom – and a mediocre one at that.
"Meeting Spencer" opens April 8, 2011 and is rated R. Comedy. Directed by Malcolm Mowbray. Written by Andrew Kole, Andrew Delaplaine, Scott Kasdin. Starring Jeffrey Tambor, Jesse Plemons, Mark Harelik, Melinda McGraw.
