Baxter. \Bax´ter\ n. the kind of guy you settle for when you can't be with the one you love.
He has allergies. He wears a driving cap. He orders Harvey Wallbangers and white wine spritzers when he goes out to the club.
Elliot Sherman, played by writer/director Michael Showalter, is all of those things: a sock garter-wearing, speed-walking, dictionary-reading Certified Public Accountant. Elliot's motto: "Compromise is the key to success." And in The Baxter, Showalter's first solo feature film, compromise is most definitely key.
The Baxter is Showalter's compromise between the wacky, intellectual humor he perfected in Wet Hot American Summer and Comedy Central's Stella and the old-fashioned romantic comedy of yesteryear.
The Baxter endears itself to the audience, which definitely wins over the sentimental, When Harry Met Sally-loving contingent. But the real reason The Baxter succeeds is the balance it establishes between romantic comedy-style clichés and unexpected humor.
Although Showalter tries to distance himself from the sketch comedy for which he is known, he can't help but stray from his feature film role once in a while. Showalter's old friends drop by in a series of cameos to offer nonsensical words of advice and encouragement to Elliot, the bumbling accountant.
However, the most unexpected cameo is an appearance by a Showalter newcomer, The Station Agent's Peter Dinklage, as Elliot and Caroline's fahhhhbulous wedding planner Benson Hedges. Hilarity ensues when Caroline drags the impeccably dressed planner to Elliot's house in Brooklyn. Hedges is a classy rainbow trout out of water, especially when he tries to escape from disputes over fried fish and funk as options for the wedding reception and winds up stranded in an unfamiliar part of New York (oh no, Brooklyn!) with no taxi and no clue where he is.
Showalter does his best to exaggerate as many romantic comedy nuances as possible. Although he mostly hits the mark, with his portrayal of Brooklyn as a small-town with an old-fashioned vibe, he sometimes misses.
Elliot and his awkward friends pronounce their words so perfectly and contraction-free that it's as if Data from Star Trek sits among them at the bar. With old-fashioned names such as Elliot and Cecil, the characters are destined for lives of baxterdom, obviously (or so we're meant to think).
Still, Showalter manages to make dance battles, men wearing women's underwear and reading the dictionary as commonplace as possible. In the end, the difference between absurd and cliché becomes imperceptible. Elliot is such a likeable blend of comedic relief and congeniality that the audience winds up rooting for the awkward nice guy instead of the handsome leading man. m
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