FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

Tonight, I'm going to the Kendall to see a preview of Jim McKay's new film, Everyday People. It premiered at Sundance earlier this year under the title Brooklyn, and will air on HBO June 26.

McKay's previous film, Our Song, was an amazingly nuanced, unpolished look at three 16-year-old girls in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn towards the end of one summer. I just viewed it for the first time since I saw it at The Brattle three years ago. What still impresses me about it is how real and uncalculated it feels. Everything--the dialogue, the narrative, the performances, seem so natural that you almost think you're watching life unfolding as it happens.

The film's central theme is the vulnerability of friendships and how complex the simple factors are that cause people to drift apart. To many, it'll seem inconsequential or slight. Although it concludes with two members of its central trio saying goodbye, the ending reminds me a little of Annie Hall in that it feels bittersweet and left open, its impact subtle rather than overpowering.

As for Everyday People going straight to cable, why not? It'll instantly find a much wider audience than the skeletally distributed Our Song ever did, and it'll probably appear on DVD much faster, too. All I'm hoping is that it will be a strong follow-up.

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Also spent the last few nights watching The Tick: The Entire Series, which collects all nine episodes of the short-lived live action version of the cult comic book/cartoon. It's great about 80% of the time; the other 20%, you're left wondering how they ever could've pulled this shtick off for more than nine episodes.

The performances by the four leads are all likable: Patrick Warburton as the perfectly dim, sweet-hearted Tick, David Burke as his novice, moth-mistaken-for-bunny-costumed sidekick Arthur, Liz Vassey as the feminist but fully-fleshed out Captain Liberty, and Nestor Carbonell as the suave, hysterically-conceived Batmanuel.

Less a Mutant X-style geekathon than a sitcom whose leads just happen to be superheroes, maybe it could've been great TV if Fox gave it a chance to evolve. Or, maybe it would've devolved into a predictable cadence of one-liners and repetitions. As is, it's a pleasantly amusing diversion that almost seems made for TV-on-DVD cultists.