The Extra Man

City Paper Grade: C+

by Shaun Brady

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Published: Aug 18, 2010

Louis Ives (Paul Dano) is a man both out of sorts and out of time, tempted by transvestism while yearning to be a dapper gentleman in a romanticized time that exists only in fiction — tellingly, he imagines himself not only as Nick Carraway, the bland, mannered narrator of The Great Gatsby, but as the beautiful Daisy, as well. No matter how dingy or dire his actual circumstances, he keeps up an inner narration (in the lugubrious, British-accented voice of Graeme Malcolm) that transforms his life into literature.

It seems destiny, then, that immediately upon reaching New York, Louis finds himself rooming with Henry Harrison, a vainglorious, self-styled aristocrat with all the trappings and none of the means. He paints his ankles black in lieu of socks and as a deterrent to fleas; he sneaks into the opera at intermission; he makes sudden, irrevocable pronouncements with a grandiose flourish. He is inevitably played by Kevin Kline, who seizes hold of the chance to amplify his talents for the stentorian and the sociopathic in Henry, Groucho Marx as written by Shakespeare and played in a rundown burlesque house. In Henry, Louis finds both mentor and master, someone to indulge his submissive tendencies and his antiquated fantasies. He also gets inducted into a clan of eccentrics through Henry's role as an "extra man," a not-quite-gigolo who acts as an escort for wealthy widows.

Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who captured the cantankerous heart of Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, stumble in milking Jonathan Ames' novel for every ounce of quirk, especially in John C. Reilly's falsetto-voiced, Hagrid-haired neighbor who's all weirdness and no weight. The film thus belongs wholly to Kline, who swells hilariously to fill Henry's enormous pretensions, hinting at a squandered past while maintaining his idiosyncratic mystery. He's tremendous fun to watch, and the momentum flags considerably when he disappears for a time. But he swallows Dano whole. Louis is nearly identical to Dano's recent role opposite Brian Cox in The Good Heart; in both cases, he disappears into a blank guilelessness that borders on invisibility, especially in the shadow of his overpowering co-stars.

Summertime Blus