Following their Sundance hit American Splendor, the wife-husband team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini now bring Jonathan Ames’ humorous novel The Extra Man to Park City screens.

Pitch-perfectly cast, the film features Paul Dano as the narrator and bumbling protagonist Louis Ives, a prep school teacher who eschews reality for a chaste dreamworld he models on The Great Gatsby. Reality of course interferes, he loses his job, and he decides to man up and follow his fantasies to New York City to become – wait for it – a writer. How real is it to find a room in Manhattan for $350 through an ad in the paper? But the film takes quirk and whimsy as a matter of course, so naturally Ives is taken in as a boarder by the eccentric, delusional, hilariously entertaining older gent Henry Harrison (an also perfect Kevin Kline). John C. Reilly completes the bachelor trifecta as their hirsute neighbor Gershon, a Subway engineer with a heart of gold and falsetto to match.

Louis lands a job at an eco magazine and falls for the cute vegan woman at the desk across the way. Obviously this romance does not blossom, in large part because Louis has perverse and sacred hungers, in his case for pork spare ribs and wearing women’s underthings. He aspires to be a gentleman but settles morosely for the cheaper pleasures of Village Voice ads, seeking comfort among the ladies (and trannies) of the night. He is forced to hide all this from Henry, who’s fussy moral code has no place for sexual deviancy (or even overnite guests). Funny, that, since Henry spends his nights entertaining wealthy dowagers (the golden ring being winter digs in Palm Beach). Henry begins to school the hapless Louis in the art of being such an “extra man” and hilarity ensues.

I won’t go into specifics. The film’s charm lies in watching Louis careen his way to adulthood through the bizarre friendships and Dada twists of fate that only New York can offer a young dreamer. And Kline as the Gatsby to Dano’s Nick Carraway? Genius.

For more info on the film see imdb