Rom- com takes real jabs at real estate
Adam Murphy doesn’t just sell condos. He sells “a lifestyle.”
It’s a line he’s told himself with unquestioning confidence since he started working for the biggest developer in town and slapping close- up pictures of cappuccino makers onto promotional postcards.
But one day, Adam ( Paolo Costanzo) looks at the ersatz images of Eden he’s sold for years with a different set of eyes.
All the oases of comfort and urban ateliers he’s hawked start to look like overpriced cardboard boxes because Adam is burning in hell — figuratively speaking.
After spreading his seed across the fertile flood plain he’s successfully paved over for eternity, Adam wakes up to an ugly surprise: Urinating is excruciating.
A visit to his doctor ( Jay Brazeau) reveals Adam has apparently contracted gonorrhea and now, he must inform his previous partners about the diagnosis.
If this sounds more like a nightmare than a light romantic comedy, you’d be right — and wrong. Although director Jason James’ story may cause irritation and anxiety as cautionary tale, it’s also surprisingly funny — and far more charming than any movie about real estate development has any right to be.
Despite the clunky structure that reads like an assembly manual, with Adam piecing his sexual history together like an Ikea bookcase with a couple of loose screws left behind, That Burning Feeling has a fun vibe.
Lead actor Paolo Costanzo plays the itching, scratching straight man to some truly gifted comedians, including Tyler Labine ( Rise of the Planet of the Apes) and Ingrid Haas ( Angrid, Chelsea Handler), as well as John Cho ( Star Trek, Harold and Kumar), who plays the well- tailored real estate baron looking to tear down the local community centre and turn it into a giant gleaming tower of glass.
The dilemma and the denouement are stock, but James has a light touch, and the movie has the safe, familiar look of a sitcom, which allows the audience to relax enough to go on the clammy, and decidedly unglammy, bus ride with Adam.
Once we’re aboard, we can take in the constant jabs at developers and their “lifestyle” pitches, the giddy discomfort of reconnecting with a one- night stand, and the screwball banter from the entire cast.
Haas and Labine are natural comics, and because they have the gift for timing, they keep the more generic elements of the script alive — and there are many, which is the film’s biggest problem. The whole thing feels a bit like an extended TV episode, which isn’t such a bad thing in the end, because at least this show is funny.