The Marc Pease Experience

In his two features as director (the other was 2002’s Love Liza), character actor Louiso has shown an off-putting interest in protagonists unable or unwilling to acknowledge the realities around them. Marc Pease (Schwartzman) is a former high-school musical actor who crumbled during his would-be starmaking number in The Wiz; eight years later, he lingers, haranguing his creepy ex–drama teacher (Stiller) and dating a high-school student (Kendrick). Like the worst school productions, The Marc Pease Experience has no timing, no rhythm, no point and no future, unless it’s as a classroom demonstration on how to repel an audience.