Quirk, Part 1: Marital Aid

BAND AID (B) - Zoe Lister-Jones came up with a great premise, and she takes it as far as the limits of twee indie filmmaking will allow her. The writer-director plays Anna, a 30-something trapped in a dull, bickering marriage with Ben (Adam Pally), having endless spats about sex and those dishes that pile up in the sink with the artfully dripping faucet.

As a way out of the rut, she suggests that they set their anger to music -- singing their fights. They dust off a bass and guitar and head to the garage to plug in and sound off. They recruit their goofy neighbor Dave (Fred Armisen) to play drums. (Armisen drummed in the Chicago band Trenchmouth in the '90s before finding fame on "Saturday Night Live" and "Portlandia.")

The couple grow closer, as the shared project (name the Dirty Dishes) gives them a common goal, and they get good enough to book a few gigs. That is, after a disastrous open-mic debut where Anna inadvisedly mixes booze and a tranquilizer and act loopy, all cute like they do in the movies. It's one of the movie's several self-aware missteps that make the viewer aware that they are watching a Sundance-branded and precious indie film.

Those quibbles aside, "Band Aid" is smart and often laught-out-loud funny. Lister-Jones (as detected in her previous writing efforts "Lola Versus" and "Breaking Upwards") knows how to tell a story efficiently, and she has a keen ear for interactions between the sexes. And with two blow-job cracks in the first five minutes, we know she's no wallflower -- though we are put on notice early on that the players are straining to be sassy and provocative.

Lister-Jones and Pally sync really well, and he has a derivative physical appeal that brings to mind Paul Rudd mixed with Seth Rogen. Some of the dialogue looks improvised, such as when he clamps a slice of pizza into a harmonica brace and savors a bit that's "Tom Petty" delicious. (Eating pizza, for him, rivals sex.)

The secret weapon here is Armisen, who is always funny to us, but whose reputation baffles others. Dave's comedic reveal is that he's a nerd who nonetheless lives with outrageously beautiful women, and that they co-habitate platonically as they all recover from sex addictions. Armisen brings an improv zing to his scenes with the co-stars, stealthily using his subtle manic energy to take the comedy to the fringes.

But the film gets overly mannered toward the end, as the giant elephant in the room (an overused emotional conflict endemic to young couples in movies) turns overwrought. Susie Essman (HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm") shows up as Ben's mother to dispense, in ways economic for plot development, a hunk of Wise Elder advice. The ending feels both insightful and a little too neat. As a rule, though, "Band Aid," like its co-stars, is funny and charming.

BONUS TRACK
The appealing trailer, with one of Armisen's best bits, about the band Dave used to play in: