The Appointments of Dennis Jennings (1988)

Steven Wright is the titular character in this rather mis-firing comedy drama that didn’t really work for me. He’s one of those glass half empty fellows with a dead end job, a sexless relationship with his girlfriend “Emma” (Laurie Metcalf) and who ensures regular sessions with his entirely disinterested and expensive psychiatrist “Dr. Schooner” (Rowan Atkinson) as he tries to get back in touch with his deeper self - and his stepfather. For the next half an hour we follow the day to day routine of his life, his forgetfulness, his fondness for pizza and of his role as the rather cruel butt of the jokes of his anything but discrete doctor - a man who also has a secret to keep that is bound to upset poor “Dennis”. Now both actors here are experts in the art of all things dead-pan. Facial expressions, slight eyebrow movements and posture positioning are their staples but here, barring the odd one-liner, I found the emphasis really too downbeat to be amusing. Is is all just too exaggerated to be in any way true-to-life, and I can’t say I felt remotely invested in any of the characters as we proceeded. There can be mileage from depicting someone’s hapless misfortunes, but I think somewhere along the line there has to be an hook to make us care - one way or the other - about the characters we are watching. Here, I found myself largely uninterested in what comes across as a series of sketches about this man that miss more than they hit. It is different, however, and though I thought it too long it is certainly still worth a gander.