I have never walked out of a movie in my life. Had I seen this in the theater I would have.The characters in this movie are very true to life, unfortunately they are all pseudo-intellectual hipsters who think every mundane thing in their lives is absolutely fascinating. Perhaps for his next movie Bob Odenkirk can make a feature about a group of alarm clocks. The buzzing of the alarm clocks would be no less annoying than the characters in "Melvin Goes to Dinner" and the film would be just as entertaining."Melvin Goes to Dinner" may be the worst movie ever made avoid it at all costs.

This was a great TiVo pickup. I liked the title, got it off IFC. Although Melvin is the title role, I loved Matt Price as Joey. And it does seem to center more around Joey (at least until the "revelation"), and the revelation was a real surprise, one that makes you go back to the beginning and watch all over again.It all about what can happen at a loosely arranged dinner between 2 friends, that expands into a dinner among friends and strangers, where people drink too much wine and start revealing things about themselves, and then it's about coincidences and fate and life-after-death, and everything else that can go on at a casual dinner.But it's not just talk, and the flashbacks and flashforwards make the movie move. And the waitress, Kathleen Roll, with a voice like Lily Tomlin, steals her scenes.

Michael Blieden wrote the play on which "Melvin Goes to Dinner" is based and he also authored the screenplay. He's Melvin, an apparent early dropout from psychiatry working for his sister in some municipal planning department. He plans on dinner with his old friend, Joey (Matt Rice) and their pal, Alex (Stephanie Courtney). With flashbacks, we learn that Alex ran into her business school classmate whom she hasn't seen for seven years, Sarah (Annabelle Gurwitch) and invited her to join the trio for dinner.What follows is a typical casual, restaurant get-together among friends in their thirties who engage in random and rapidly shifting chatter. The usual topics prevail: friendship, work, the ticking of a woman's biological clock, reincarnation, anal sex, cheating on lovers - the list goes on. They have a waitress, unnamed (Kathleen Roll), who's predictably ditzy.It's all been done before but there is a surprise here near the end, a big one. And the quartet is engaged in some probing but fleeting talk about life issues that matter to most viewers, especially younger ones. The cast is largely inexperienced-only one, Ms. Gurwitch, has any real list of credits.One really neat episode: recounting his experiences as a staff shrink (and improbably wearing not only surgical garb but a face mask around his throat), Melvin interviews a purportedly schizophrenic patient played, without a credit, by Jack Black. Black's nutcase actually espouses one of the most lucid and convincing views of the nature of life I've ever seen on the screen. He doesn't belong on a psych ward. It really got me thinking."Melvin Goes to Dinner" is neither as terrific as some claim nor as bad as others feel. If, like me, you are a restaurant voyeur who compulsively listens in on conversations emanating from other tables, you'll feel at home here and particularly enjoy following the whole interchange without being distracted by talking with your friends or having to deal with wait staff.7/10

What can I say? I loved it! Maybe its a guilty pleasure! At the beginning of the movie, I found the characters to be self-important, pseudo-intellectual jerks. I was surprised that Bob Odenkirk had anything to do with this movie about a bunch of hipsters pretentiously going on and on about their lives. How boring! But then all the sudden I was enjoying it! I wanted to know what happened to everyone! I think the genius of this movie is it takes unlikeable characters and makes us interested in them. I would go so far as to say I liked them! And I was happy to see that there was a resolution for our hero, Melvin, at the end. I was also impressed with how they handled a script with probably very little action. They just let the camera move at every possible chance! This could have been a really boring flick, but it just seems to hop along at a great brisk pace thanks to the editing, directing and camera movement. I can't wait to watch this movie again!