Good Dick

Good Dick is a truly original love story. It is also quite funny and a joy to watch. When Anna slinks into an independent video store to check out the latest in erotic offerings, she catches the eye of one of the clerks. He takes it upon himself to break down her emotional barriers and launches on a quest to make her fall in love with him. From the beginning, we see this is not going to be an easy task.

Marianna Palka is the tour de force writer, director, and actor behind Good Dick. She surrounds herself with an ensemble of great, young character actors, most notably Jason Ritter, who masters the daunting task of making a total loser (and part-time stalker) into one of the most lovable and eccentric characters in indie film. Deadpan as Anna, Palka is the perfect foil to his persistent come-ons, blatantly rejecting him at every turn. In this exceptionally well-written film, their tortured encounters transition from a bizarre standoff to...well, what they end up with.

Like classic Woody Allen, Palka has an uncanny knack for understanding the complex give and take of human interaction and the sometimes painful motivations behind them. In Good Dick, the whole notion of romance is turned on its head and refashioned into a more modernif not more offbeatimage.