For once, truth in advertising: “Dealin’ With Idiots” spends 83 minutes doing exactly that. Drawing on personal experience, actor-comedian Jeff Garlin co-wrote, directed and starred in this flat, aimless comedy skewering the parents of junior baseball players, a group of losers, malcontents and fussbudgets who are apparently in a league of their own where stupidity is concerned. Too weightless to qualify as misanthropic, the IFC release is getting a limited bicoastal run but will find its most appreciative audience among fans of the numerous standup comedians rounding out the ensemble.
Popular comic Max Morris (Garlin, not exactly stretching himself) decides to make a movie about the parents of the other kids on his son’s baseball team, necessitating a series of one-on-one interviews for research purposes. The subjects include a coach (Bob Odenkirk) who runs both the team and the local print shop with clueless officiousness; a nutrition enthusiast (Jami Gertz) who insists on “100% parent participation” and passes around a binder full of carefully illustrated snack recommendations; a bickersome lesbian couple (Kerri Kenney-Silver, Gina Gershon); a hot nanny (Hope Dworaczyk); and a pathetic Richard Kind character (Richard Kind). In between these aggravating encounters, Max has pleasant conversations with his dead dad (Timothy Olyphant). Don’t stay past the closing credits.
