Metacritic Film

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

Starring Jeff Garlin, Sarah Silverman, Elle Fanning, Dan Castellaneta, Gina Gershon, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Kind, and Amy Sedaris

MPAA RATING:

IFC First Take
Comedy  |  Romance
80 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters September 5, 2007

James is a frustrated and underappreciated Chicago actor who lives with his mother and has only really wanted three things in life: someone to love him, a great part, and to lose weight. Unfortunately, he is 0 for 3. His girlfriend dumps him, he loses the title roles in a remake of Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty to teen idol Aaron Carter, and he sneaks out of an Overeaters Anonymous meeting only to wind up at an ice cream parlor. There, he meets Beth, who quickly wins his heart but will this cause James more problems than it solves? Or has he finally found someone to eat cheese with? (IFC Films)

WRITTEN BY
Jeff Garlin

DIRECTED BY
Jeff Garlin

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

60 / 100

Critic Reviews

75 Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling
A wry movie that, packed with his well-known friends and scored intermittently to bouncy accordion music, plays like a softer episode of "Curb."
75 Boston Globe
Garlin's movie is beautiful in its own way. It also suggests that David's show would still be brilliant without the aggravation. I'm not saying that David should renounce misanthropy. But maybe he could curb less of Garlin's apparent enthusiasm for people.
75 Chicago Tribune Sid Smith
If you’re a Chicagoan, if you have just a smidgen of interest in the city’s arts scene and if you’ve been around a while, there’s no way to be objective about I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.
75 Chicago Sun-Times
It is a minor movie, but a big-time minor movie...If there is such a thing as a must-see three-star movie, here it is.
70 Village Voice Ella Taylor
May be one of the wisest studies of urban loneliness since Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty."
70 The New York Times Matt Zoller Seitz
Laid back and affectionate, “Cheese” is the movie version of a dear friend you could spend all day with.
70 Slate Dana Stevens
Feels more like a series of skits than a movie, though it does tie up several plot threads in a lyrical last scene worthy of vintage Woody Allen.
67 The Onion (A.V. Club)
Unassuming and sweet-natured, and Garlin earns a lot of goodwill with his off-the-cuff wisecracks.
67 Austin Chronicle
The film is visually bland and hits a few comic dead ends, but there's an element of pathos that allows us to believe in the plight of the fictional James.
63 Miami Herald
Cheese is written with plenty of sophisticated wit, but it is not quite convincing as a movie.
63 New York Post
Slight but charming.
63 TV Guide
None of it really adds up to much but it's smart, low-key fun -- terrible title and dangling preposition notwithstanding.
63 New York Daily News
Garlin, like Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine in "Marty," is good company, even when his out-of-control eating and self-loathing threaten to overwhelm him.
50 Washington Post John Maynard
The entire film carries a whiff of "vanity project," with several of Garlin's comedic buddies reporting for duty.
50 Los Angeles Times Robert Abele
James and Beth have fun in a grocery store pretending to be different characters meeting in the aisles. As they learn, sometimes the moment works, sometimes it doesn't. The same can be said for this unfailingly modest film.
50 Variety
Never completely takes off, yet somewhat overestimates the surrounding zaniness. Still, any opportunity to witness the improvisatory skills of Sarah Silverman, Bonnie Hunt and Amy Sedaris should not be missed.
50 Chicago Reader
The story ultimately lands in incoherence; but the cameos and local details, and even some of the gags, keep it perky.
25 San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson
Garlin's directing has little pacing, and many of the borderline gags could have been salvaged with some sharper editing. And there's a shocking amount of jokes and situations that just don't work.

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