| Peter Gottlieb is a freshly-divorced, hopeless sad-sack of an economics professor at a small community college. Just in case you weren’t sure, the movie's opening sentence clarifies that this is indeed a fictional story. The beginning, featuring Peter in a hospital delivery room eagerly awaiting the arrival of his baby receives different news instead, is funny. It remains funny when we jump ahead five years to Peter teaching with no care whatsoever about his students or his job. | | 2024
Directed by: Sam Centrella
Screenplay by: Sam Centrella, Reuben Barsky, and Giorgio Panetta
Starring: Reuben Barsky and Erica Pappas
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The Life of Peter Gottlieb is a low-budget independent film, and you can tell. The production design is severely lacking. Set primarily at college, most scenes involve only two characters having a conversation in front of a white wall. The classroom scenes include a few other students, but every other part of this college is completely void of students and activity and signs of life. It hurts the atmosphere and really dampens a crucial plot point.
The acting is a bit shaky with a lot of unevenness in line delivery and character development. For the most part the two leads – Reuben Barsky as Peter and Erica Pappas as forthright student Sabrina – are good. Barsky in particular has a sharp edge to the downtrodden humour of Peter, and Pappas adds a touch of emotional connection when we get to the turning point and the finale.
The film has its issues but there are also a lot of good ideas in here. Peter is a really entertaining character. A guy who has given up on life, has no more fucks to give, and couldn’t care less about the finding out part after he fucks things over for himself. He doesn’t want Sabrina’s attention, but he also doesn’t care enough to do anything about it, until Sabrina starts forcing herself into his life. A smart girl whose parents gave up on her long ago. Decision-making is not her best skill.
Meanwhile the school and the town are embroiled in a missing persons case. Two college kids have gone missing, the detectives have made no progress, people are on edge. The lack of atmosphere from the poor production design becomes very prominent at this point. Bigger budget movies could have so much fun and intrigue with this plot point, and this film does its best with what they have, but there is a sense that perhaps this story is too big for this little movie. Things get progressively more serious in the second half when the focus starts shifting to finding the missing girls.
The Life of Peter Gottlieb is funny enough in the beginning to keep viewers watching even though production issues really start hampering some of the plot developments. Peter is such a well crafted character that every plot turn is a good idea even if the movie on the whole can’t quite live up to potential.
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