‘Chirp’ is barely worth a peep
Written and directed by twentysomething film school grad Jonathan Blitstein, “Let Them Chirp Awhile” follows two friends (played by Justin Rice and Brendan Sexton III) recently out of college in New York City -- in their world, “older” means 28 or 29 -- as they navigate the hurdles of finishing discovering who they want to be and beginning the task of starting their lives.
Romantic complications, job hassles, artistic aspirations, competitive friendships and watching an ex’s dog are all given equal emotional footing. Nothing is really that important, and yet everything really matters.
The film bursts with a video-store’s worth of visual and verbal references to Bergman, Kubrick, Fellini, Woody Allen and others, bopping from idea to idea, stylistic quirk to briefly held conceit, without coalescing into anything substantial or insightful.
With its jazzy score and lo-fi look, the film presents itself as purposefully anachronistic and slightly antiquated. The experience of watching it is perhaps more akin to the more contemporary circumstance of looking at the Facebook page of a total stranger, bouncy and promising and meaningless.
The only thing that works in the film is actor Rice, a musician previously seen onscreen in the vastly superior “Mutual Appreciation.” But his understated charm wears thin here, pushed to its limit by the indecisions of Blitstein’s script.
A movie where the only conception of life seems to come from other movies makes for no kind of movie at all.
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‘Let Them Chirp Awhile’
MPAA rating: Unrated
Running time: 1 hour,
31 minutes
Playing: At Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-3500
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