Paddleton: A tragic story but also tragically boring

It's nice to see Ray Romano do something other than There's Something about Raymond which was a series that was wildly popular in terms of ratings but never really caught my eye. In Paddleton Ray takes on a very serious role and it involves a subject matter that I hope never happens to me, or to any of you.

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Michael (Mark Duplass) and Andy (Ray Romano) are neighbors and best friends who have quite "normal" lives. Neither one is particularly successful or wealthy, but they enjoy the smaller things in life like hanging out and watching movies, putting together puzzles, and playing a game called Paddleton. Just like it is said in the movie you have probably never heard of this sport, because Michael and Andy made it up.

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One day after a week of having rather intense stomach issues, Michael goes to the doctor only to receive some pretty harrowing news: He has inoperable an terminal stomach cancer. The doctors tell him that he can try to fight it if he wants to but it is going to be a painful and expensive process that has very little chance of success. Basically he is handed his death sentence.

He is given an option to take his own life in a painless way using legally prescribed prescription tablets as an alternative, which Michael decides to do. Andy, who appears to be just as socially awkward as Michael is, encourages his best friend to fight the disease, but he doesn't want to.

These two guys do basically everything together and as time goes by you start to realize that Andy's motivations for Michael to fight the disease might be more for himself than for his friend. He doesn't have anyone else, or at least that is the way it is presented in the film.

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The strengths of this film are that everyone in it is a pretty fantastic actor and it also has a warm feeling to it that makes me want to really embrace my really good friends a bit more than I probably already do. The weak points of this film are that it is pretty evident really early on what is going to happen in the entire story and therefore it is just 90 minutes to the "big finish" that you already know is going to happen in the first 10 minutes of the film. The dialogue is interesting enough, but that's all that the film really is: A bunch of talking.

For some, this might be enough. But for me I actually skipped about 1/3 of the film because this whole thing could have easily been 20 minutes long but as is expected of films, this one clocked in at the usual 90 minutes (it was actually only 89.)

Should I watch it?

I almost feel a bit bad saying this but I don't really feel as though the film is worth the 90 minutes and there are a lot of other things that are more worthwhile. It is a wonderful story of platonic love and great friendship but unfortunately the entire story is just quite boring and a foregone conclusion. Just out of respect for the subject-matter I am not going to give this a full thumbs down, but honestly, there are better things to see than this and if you watched the above trailer, you've basically seen the whole gist of the movie already.