On Demand Weekly

THEY’RE OUT OF THE BUSINESS Looks For Biz On DemandApril 11, 2011

IFC Films

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THEY’RE OUT OF THE BUSINESS (IFC Films).

THEY’RE OUT OF THE BUSINESS Looks For Biz On Demand
By Chris Claro

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the early 90s, when the indie film sandbox was filled with boys named Quentin, Kevin, Spike, and of course, Eric. “Eric who?” you ask. Why, Eric Schaeffer, of course. The heir apparent to Woody Allen – in his own fevered imagination, anyway – Schaeffer’s niche was the New York-based comedy, in which the lovably neurotic, Upper West Side Jew, almost always portrayed by Schaeffer, contemplated life, love, and his own supposedly rakish charm.

In his maiden directorial effort, MY LIFE’S IN TURNAROUND, Schaeffer co-starred with Donal Lardner Ward as two Manhattan slackers who attempt to make a movie. In their early thirties when they made the film, Schaeffer and Ward tapped into the pre-millennial zeitgeist trying to bring their vision to the screen on a wing and an Amex card.

Flash forward to 2011; Schaeffer has made a career out of oh-so-talky films in which he plays a thinly-veiled version of himself – and he seems to keep writing, directing and starring so that he can make out with the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker and Amanda de Cadenet. Ward has had a patchwork career of writing and directing with and without Schaeffer.

Each seems to have found a hole in his schedule big enough to revisit their TURNAROUND characters of Splick and Jason in THEY’RE OUT OF THE BUSINESS. Nearly twenty years later, the two former wunderkinds have hit hard times, but Splick, at least, feels they have one more movie in them and sets out to convince his buddy help realize the dream.

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