Afterlife, Part 1: Wandering

DEAN (B) - Each generation gets the "Garden State" it deserves. Boomers had "The Graduate." Millennials get the mopey but affecting "Dean."

Comedian Demetri Martin (a member of Gen X) plays younger in a story he wrote and directed about a young New Yorker set adrift after the death of his mother. Dean is a comic artist who goes on a jaunt to Los Angeles to change his mood and ostensibly advance his career.

Martin has a deadpan style in the mode of Jason Schwartzman, with a sweep of hair across his forehead and an ironic grin occasionally crashing his blue mood. Dean has a meet-cute with at an LA party with Nicky (a subtly effective Gillian Jacobs), the latest version of the manic pixie dream girl.

To Martins credit, he does not take the relationship between Dean and Nicky on a predictable path. Both actors are quite charming in a classic Mumblecore method. Each delivers sharp lines while staying rooted in character.

In a subplot, Dean's father, Robert (Kevin Kline), is fumbling his way around widowhood, somewhat snapping out of his mourning period (it's been about a year) by making time with a cute real estate agent, Carol (Mary Steenburgen), his own manic pixie dream woman. The geriatric romance feels forced, though Kline expertly delivers a fine twist, another clever plot misdirection.

Martin cranks up the quaint by illustrating the frame often with his own actual comic drawings, which explore themes of alienation and death in respectful New Yorker style. They not only knit scenes together, but they occasionally pack an emotional punch -- or offer droll comic relief.

The filmmaker brings this all to a head with a reckoning over this father-son mourning. But he stumbles a few times -- his timeline doesn't really make sense, and the threatened sale of Dean's childhood home feels rushed and cartoonish. But there is genuine heart in this big-screen debut (as with Zach Braff's 2004 milepost). The male relationships are finely sketched -- especially the plotline devoted to Dean's friend's profound love for a cat. And the banter throughout is winning.

It remains to be seen whether this little labor of love will engender the same backlash its predecessor eventually suffered.

BONUS TRACK
Typical retro gloominess from the soundtrack -- another "Garden State" echo. Here is Rick Hayward with "Find Yourself Sometime":