May 14, 2004

BY JOHN MONAGHAN
FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

"Martin & Orloff" is one of the few films you could call wildly uneven and the filmmakers would still consider it a compliment.

This madcap Manhattan comedy, made on a shoestring, links a suicidal ad exec with an ADD-addled psychiatrist whose methods go beyond bizarre.

There are no introductions. No getting-to-know-you preamble. "So why did you try to kill yourself?" Orloff (Matt Walsh) asks button-down Martin (Ian Roberts), and it's only one of a dozen reasons for the new patient to feel ill at ease.

When Martin hesitates, Orloff gets antsy. He looks lazily around the office, nearly sets the place on fire with his cigar, and then notices the time. He's got to be at a softball game in 15 minutes, but Martin can come along and finish his session on the way.

The game doesn't have an umpire, so Martin is enlisted. He's lousy at the job, but calls balls and strikes with surprising enthusiasm. It's only after calling Orloff out at the plate that Martin gets in trouble. Coerced into changing his call, he ends up in the middle of a riot and then in jail.

Where the movie goes from here is anybody's guess, including that of director Lawrence Blume, who seems to be trying to keep up with a movie that continuously spins out of control.

While the film enlists familiar faces like Andy Richter, Tina Fey and Janeane Garofalo in cameo roles, the movie belongs to Roberts and Walsh, founding members of Comedy Central's Upright Citizens Brigade. (Walsh has also logged time with Conan O'Brien and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.") They obviously have a great time with the kind of breakneck absurdist comedy that might have died with the Marx Bros.

That "Martin & Orloff" can't really sustain this level of energy has more to do with the laws of physics than the deficiencies of the tossed-salad script. It's credited to the actors and Roberts' wife Katie, though you sense that everyone -- including the key grip -- had a hand in it.

Even when you groan at the more cornball elements, the movie has more genuine laughs than the dozen or so Hollywood comedies Ben Stiller has already made this decade.

Contact freelance writer JOHN MONAGHAN at madjohn@earthlink.net.

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