SAD SACK BANKS ON SUCCESS
Sweet film walks fine, sympathetic line and never stumbles along its gentle way
First, a word on the title:
Eat Wheaties! It's an odd moniker that needs a little unpacking, so here goes: According to the film, Elizabeth Banks used the phrase when she went to the University of Pennsylvania with Sid Straw (played by Tony Hale). She'd shout it out as a kind of combination farewell and rallying cry, and it's how he remembers her.
Sid is a socially awkward middle manager at a small Arizona company that's just a roving camera away from being The Office. Affable and kind, he's also one of those people who tries just a little too hard. Case in point: After one date with Kate (Sarah Burns) he enters her number in his phone as “My Girlfriend,” only to have to rename it after the second date.
Sid decides to contact Banks to request a photograph for his brother (David Walton) for his birthday, and subsequently finds himself writing to her on Facebook — alas, publicly — with dismal details of his semi-sad life. He doesn't seem troubled by the silence on her end, although he soon runs afoul of her agent (Sarah Chalke), who pegs him as a stalker.
Canadian writer-director Scott Abramovitch has adapted a 2003 novel by Michael Kun into Eat Wheaties! The book was called The Locklear Letters, substituting a different generation's crush in a story written BFB (before Facebook).
Abramovitch and Hale have clearly worked hard to craft a character who is ungainly without being frightening — we remain fully aware through the film that, whatever else Sid may be, he's not stalker material.
It's a fine line, difficult to pull off, but the film never stumbles as we ride along with Sid, who is put through one humiliation after another — kicked off the U Penn reunion committee, fired from his job, forced to move in with his parents — even as the screenplay holds out the hope of redemption.
Things seem to take a turn for the better when he hires an almost-lawyer (Paul Walter Hauser) to fight a specious restraining order. But this is clearly a character whose life keeps taking one bad turn after another.
Can salvation be as easy as eating the right breakfast cereal? Banks would probably say so, but we'll leave it for viewers to learn the answer. Regardless of how it turns out, Eat Wheaties! is a sweet journey, well worth taking, and part of a balanced cinematic breakfast.