"Stan" review by Ben Kenber

Evald Johnson’s “Stan” is a wonderfully black romantic comedy dealing with situations and feelings we are more familiar with than we’d like to admit; unrequited love, pining for the girl for your dreams while she’s dating some other buff dude, dealing with unwanted advances, and living in fear of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Sounds like a lot for one movie, but “Stan” manages to balance everything and is surprisingly moving. Even better, it doesn’t work all that hard in getting laughs because it doesn’t need to.

The Stan of this movie is Stan Mandeville (John F. Schaffer, who also co-wrote the script with Evald), a lonely and overweight man whose face is like Ewan McGregor’s in “Beginners:” full of sadness that he is either unwilling or unable to hide. Working daily at an orchid warehouse, he frequents “massage parlors” to be pleasured by the prostitutes. But after one visit too many, he becomes convinced that he has herpes, and not even Dr. Roopenian (David Jay Barry) can ease his concerns after giving him a clean bill of health.

We see this fear of STD’s implanted in Stan when he was 12 years old and watching an unsettlingly explicit sex education film, the kind that makes you never want to get laid (that feeling always passes though). The narrator ends up becoming the Greek chorus of “Stan,” reciting different diseases and the damage they do. This is an amusing device that I don’t think even Woody Allen has tried yet!

The angel in Stan’s eyes is Mary (Christina Diaz), a beautiful young woman who shares a good friendship with him, but not a romantic one. We can tell from Stan’s eyes that he is forever enamored by Mary, but she is still dating this handsome and buff dude who doesn’t always treat her right. During this time, the greenhouse gets a new employee in Ann (Gioia Marchese), a plump woman who is unapologetic about how she looks or what she thinks. From the get go, she takes a liking to Stan even as their boss Mr. Frankle starts obsessing over her to a very unhealthy extent.

From the outset, “Stan” looks to be the typical story of a man chasing after the wrong girl when the one he should be chasing is smack dab in front of him. That’s been the case with movies like “Teen Wolf” (no, not the MTV series) among others. But what I really liked about “Stan” is that none of the characters are drawn in broad strokes. While characters in this kind of drama have one or two dimensions at most (nice guy, beautiful bitch, nice girl not quite as beautiful), the ones here are quite complex in their everyday problems and in what they think they want.

Even Stan himself, the “hero” of the movie, is not always the average nice guy he appears to be. Well-meaning at one point but thoughtlessly dismissive at others, he is flawed like everyone else. What’s great about John F. Schaffer’s performance is in how he makes you care about Stan even when he does the wrong thing. Stan’s problems are not all that removed from our own, and Schaffer never turns him into a caricature or a cliché. He makes Stan as real as your next door neighborhood (whether that’s good or bad is a whole other story).

Gioia Marchese is equally wonderful as Ann, whose gleeful cynicism sheds light on her hard life that has forced her to not take any crap from no one. Seeing Gioia cut through the BS makes her instantly endearing, and she makes Ann one of the more original free spirits in movies. Moreover, she makes us wonder why we’re not as free spirited in our own lives.

At first glance, Christina Diaz looks like she has “Stan’s” most thankless role as the girl who can’t give her friend the affection he craves. However, she does great work in keeping her from being your usual spoiled rotten brat who doesn’t know a good thing when she sees one. Christina succeeds in making Mary likable even when she would rather make out with a buff douche bag (brought vividly to life by David Michie) that never treats her right. Unlike other characters in the romantic comedy genre, she isn’t necessarily doing this out of spite. Even if she doesn’t deserve Stan, we still feel her pain when she gets mistreated.

As good as those actors are, “Stan” is almost stolen by Todd Patrick Breaugh whose facial expressions by themselves create huge fits of laughter throughout. The scene where Mr. Frankle drives his daughters to school while they sing to some risqué pop song about sex and making out is one of the film’s comedic highlights, and the look or horror and bewilderment that crosses over his face had me in stitches. Todd also makes Mr. Frankle empathetic to a point, and that’s even when he turns out to be a real pervert.

There are some other strong performances worth noting as well. David Jay Barry has some memorable moments as Dr. Roopenian, and he makes the role more than just your typical doctor character hovering through an endless number of movies and TV shows. Adam Lamb scores some big laughs as Bill, Stan’s belittling roommate who lives to make people feel beneath him in the world of video games. Scott Vinci also steals a couple of scenes as a grocery store clerk, and he has perhaps the movie’s most memorable line (you’ll know it when you hear it). David Michie and Jim Giordano also make the most of their time onscreen as Mary’s butthead of a boyfriend and Stan’s uncle.

“Stan” is described as a “dark, romantic comedy for everyone who feels a little tortured by everyday trauma,” and this description sums it up perfectly. The script is remarkably well written, and the characters are never dumbed down as they would be in a bigger budgeted Hollywood romantic comedy. That the characters and their situations feel so real makes “Stan” leave a lasting impression, and it’s one of the nicest surprises in a genre that I typically run away from at warp speed. Hopefully this independent movie will rise above the fray and find the audience it really deserves.

* * * ½ out of * * * *

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