6/10
The talent agency
19 April 2008
Warning: Spoilers
"Man About Town", written and directed, as well as acted, by Mike Binder, shows how low some of the people that rule the film industry have stooped so low in order to establish themselves in the fantasy planet of Hollywood and the competitive world they seem to inhabit. Some famous names come to mind of people that got their start this way. It is curious how our society does not bat an eyelash to denounce their deception, their greed and the ambition that seem to be their only excuse to justify their existence.

At the center of the story, one meets Jack Giamoro. He lives the kind of life that not many of us mortals get to know. He is married to a gorgeous woman, a product of that rarefied world, that has cheated on him with one of his clients. Jack, upon learning about the deceit in his own life, goes berserk. He hires the relative of a man in his office to take all her possessions out his house and his life.

We get a chance to see what Jack's life was like growing up. In flashbacks one can watch how his own brother took the girl he liked away from him. His father, who is senile, lives with him, to make matters worse. Luckily, Jack has no children, which makes his separation from the wife more bearable. Jack has a problem in opening himself to others as shown in the writing classes he decides to take, but he wants to use to his own advantage; he doesn't want to share personal aspects of his writing with the professor, or his fellow students.

The surprising turn of events that befall Jack make him more human, in ways one never suspected. In a way, the film is a cop out because Jack doesn't show any kind of human kindness from the way he rose to the top, or in the way he wants to leave the same privilege life he got to enjoy when he stole business secrets from his employer and enabled him to have an upper hand on the others.

The problem with the film is we never really cared about these people and their insignificant troubles. Mike Binder, who created this film knows first hand how that segment of the film population acts and gives the viewer a bird's eye view of the shallowness of it all.
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