Walter exists in a strange sort of limbo, not one between heaven and hell but between Hollywood legitimacy and student film-esque simplicity. Unfortunately, for all the competent editing and the occasional recognizable actor, the actual content of Walter skews far closer to the sour tendencies of the latter.
Our protagonist is the titular Walter, played by Andrew J. West, a character and a performance as bland and unmemorable as the movie surrounding it. Our well-put-together protagonist is a 20-something white male who, of course, provides voice-over narration to lead us through his life, one filled with stereotypes.
To begin with, he works at a movie theater with the unattainable blonde girl of his dreams, Kendall (Leven Rambin), who only becomes an actual character in one scene wherein she holds Walter’s hand and tearfully says, “We’re all broken.” Also populating the perpetually crowded theater are a bemused boss (Jim Gaffigan) and an over-the-top bro rival (Milo Ventimiglia) who spends most of his time insisting he’s going to bang the object of our protagonist’s desires. Rounding out his mostly-non-existent personal life are an excessive worry-wart of a mother (Virginia Madsen) and a comically unhelpful psychiatrist (William H. Macy), who mostly just tells Walter he’s crazy.
And why is Walter crazy? In fact, he believes himself to be the son of God (not Jesus though, he clarifies), tasked with deciding the eternal fate of everyone he comes into contact with. While everything seems well and good for a time, his routine is eventually interrupted by a ghost named Greg who insists Walter decide his fate. For whatever reason, he can’t make a judgment on the deceased—nor can he get Greg to leave him alone.
Even Walter’s apparent insanity is treated more as a quirk than an actual issue, but I suppose that’s keeping in line with its unwavering commitment to white-bread blandness.
Greg’s mostly-uninterested prodding and unlikely connection to Walter’s past soon reveals that our hero has a few demons waiting to be confronted. While the film’s first half consists mostly of sunny, quirky set-pieces and half-jokes, the second devolves into uninvolving melodrama, cycling through non-revelatory flashbacks and hackneyed monologues delivered by undeveloped characters, as Walter’s limited sanity decays in only the most predictable of ways.
The film’s stylistic choices are mostly Sundance tropes that might have seemed interesting twenty years back—Walter wanders through overexposed traumatic memories, says things aloud that clearly aren’t actually being said aloud (“theater six on your right, hell”), and tries to literally outrun his problems.
Genre-wise, Walter could most easily be described as a drama-comedy that toes that line so well it somehow manages to be both unfunny and never emotionally involving. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with the concept, and it could be great in the right hands, but the writer-director team can’t seem to come up with anything really worth saying, except maybe “everyone has issues, so why not face yours and get past them?” Even Walter’s apparent insanity is treated more as a quirk than an actual issue, but I suppose that’s keeping in line with its unwavering commitment to white-bread blandness.
Although Walter is mercifully short, clocking in under 90 minutes, its final scenes left a bitter taste in my mouth that I’m still trying to mentally wash away. Without giving away too much for viewers still intending to seek out the film, I’ll just say it ends with Walter, rejuvenated by a gloriously unhelpful piece of advice, storming through his day and overcoming each and every one of his many problems, until we finally cut to black over a shot of him smiling, hopeful for what the future holds. And I was hopeful too, for a future free of this film.
Walter is now playing at the Arena Cinema Hollywood and on VOD.
