AllMovie

Writer/director Brad T. Gottfred's The Movie Hero stretches its premise paper-thin, but Jeremy Sisto's amusingly off-kilter lead performance and a strong supporting cast including Peter Stormare and Carlos Jacott help keep things fairly entertaining throughout the film's running time. It's not that Blake isn't an interesting character; his unbridled enthusiasm and movie-obsessed world view helped make the film a festival favorite. But his witty penchant for pointing out the clichés that surround him ("What are the odds that I would be your first case out of quack-talk school?" he presciently asks his neophyte therapist and love interest) isn't sufficient to maintain interest in the film's weak narrative. Instead, we have a film that works best in its asides. Despite Stormare's iconic performance as Suspicious Character, his character's name and the fact that Stormare is playing him are more interesting than anything the guy actually does. The premise is sustained imaginatively enough that it would be curmudgeonly to complain about minor inconsistencies. The real problem with the film is that because the story is weak and the concept is essentially played for one joke (there seems to be a lot of untapped potential here, as the film occasionally seems about to lurch into vaunted, mind-bending Being John Malkovich territory), it has to get by on its goofy charm. Essentially good-natured and disposably lightweight, the film is ingratiating enough to compensate for its flaws.