The Boy Downstairs *** (2017, Zosia Mamet, Matthew Shear, Deirdre O’Connell) – Movie Review

Writer-director Sophie Brooks’s 2017 Woody Allen-style romantic comedy drama The Boy Downstairs is pleasant, amusing and charming, with a pleasing, bitter-sweet situation, some good funny lines and appealing performances.

Zosia Mamet plays a pleasantly confused dithery sort of young woman, an aspiring writer called Diana, who moves into her dream apartment but discovers the boy downstairs in her building is her ex-lover, Ben (Matthew Shear), an aspiring musician. That’s it, that’s all for 91 minutes.

The Boy Downstairs is basically a short story. It is a slightly fragile edifice for an entire feature film movie, but, like the heroine, not too fragile. It looks like it is going to crack up, but, no, it doesn’t. It holds together. It holds steady and firm. So. good!

The bad is, no doubt to spin it out, Brooks goes for confusing shift scenes back and forth in time that only just about work. You have to keep checking the hair style, clothes, facial hair (of The Boy Downstairs, that is) to keep abreast.

As it is very laid back, and does not punch too hard, it may well get overlooked. But, forgettable though it may be, it is entirely sweet, engaging and fun, and worth a little detour to find. Deirdre O’Connell is great as a widowed landlady and confidante to dithery Diana. None of the characters is particularly fresh or surprising, but the actors put a new coat of polish on the stereotypes as Brooks tiptoes safely and adroitly through the clichés.

The characters and the film are likeable, enough said.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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