For years, Mike Birbiglia has put himself through the wringer – and famously, a plate glass window – whilst under the spell of a rare sleep disorder that causes him to physically act out his nightmares. Though these twilight traumas have jeopardised his health and past relationships, the affliction has proved a boon for his career as a stand-up comedian, giving him a hook off which to hang his drowsy observations of life’s absurdities.
A sweet, inoffensive comedy about relationship stasis, made by a comic, under the sign of 'Annie Hall'.
The laconic comic found fame when his anecdote about that infamous hurtle through a hotel window was played as a segment on This American Life, the enormously popular NPR radio show/podcast (of which this writer is a fan). As a consequence of that program (and a book and stage play), Birbiglia’s reflections are now the subject of a feature film, Sleepwalk with Me. (It’s produced by This American Life’s Ira Glass.)
Mike Birbiglia plays Matt Pandamiglio, a schlubby wannabe stand-up, who's punching above his weight with a smart and funny girlfriend, Abby (Lauren Ambrose). The smiley singer places no pressure on her man to commit to marriage or babies, but is genuinely hurt when it becomes clear that he’s never given the pursuit of either a single thought.
Via flashback and intermittent narration, we witness events that, in Matt’s reasoning, conspire to tighten the screws: A friend’s baby 'needs a buddy"; the occasion of a family wedding draws attention to the absence of his own, and so on. The paralysing panic manifests as weird waking dreams, in which he fends off a 'jackal attack’, or stands on the dais at the 'Olympics’ (in actuality, he’s squaring off against the clothes hamper, and teetering atop a tallboy).
In a comedy club, he’s the barman and occasional warm-up guy, whose gags fall flat until a wry aside about his own failure to commit earns him a pat on the back from a headliner (Marc Maron, in one of the film’s many cameos from working comics). Later, the same gag turns a heckler into a chuckler and gives Matt the first hint that his career in stand-up might yet reap more than just petrol money. So he starts to mine his personal life for more slackerised riffs on the age-old, boom-tish "Take my wife...please!" formula. Suffice it to say, his blossoming career comes at a price, and we wait for the inevitable confrontations with both Abby and that hotel window, for Matt to see the error of his ways.
The set-ups of Sleepwalk with Me are no better, no worse than your average sitcom or rom-com and the execution is likewise standard stuff. Support characters such as Matt’s shrill mother (Carol Kane) and straitlaced father (James Rebhorn) are cut from familiar cloth. Birbiglia occasionally breaks the fourth wall for audience updates, speaking to us in our spot as the imagined passenger in the sputtering Volvo he’s borrowed from his dad.
I’d caution anyone against overselling the film as 'laugh-out-loud’ funny (as I’ve heard it described). It’s a sweet, inoffensive comedy about relationship stasis, made by a comic, under the sign of Annie Hall. Matt/Abby are an updated Alvy/Annie from Allen’s oft-copied story of two likeable people who are wrong for each other. You can’t fault filmmakers for re-visiting such timeless material, though. To paraphrase Annie Hall’s last line, most of us still need those eggs.
Sleepwalk with Me is a modest film of modest ambition. And it’s modestly successful at achieving its aims. Sure it owes Woody a credit, but equally, it owes much to fans of This American Life, whose enormous goodwill and affection for the show will likely translate into ticket sales and downloads. Perhaps the strength of the brand will outweigh the movie’s weaknesses.
Watch 'Sleepwalk with Me' at SBS On Demand
