"Too Much Sleep"
Jack Crawford (Marc Palmieri) is a 24-year old night security guard who lives at home with his mother. One morning, while heading home on the bus, he's checking out a pretty young woman when his handgun is stolen. Desperate, Jack enlists the help of a local can-do guy named Eddie (Pasquale Gaeta) whose advice sends the slacker into a weirdly populated underworld in "Too Much Sleep."
First-time feature helmer David Maquiling directs his own script in homage to Martin Scorsese's own nightmare journey, "After Hours." The hapless schmuck that the story hangs upon, Jack, has one ambition in life - to sleep. His night watchman job allows him that, but does not prepare him for the world he is about to enter after his revolver, unregistered, is stolen. The neighborhood BMOC, Eddie, was deputy county clerk for 19 years and knows the right people to ask about such things as stolen guns.
Eddie's advice and directions lead Jack into an increasingly bizarre world. He gets "maced" with Jovan Musk by his principle subject, Judy (Judy Sabo Podinker), when he confronts her over the gun. Eddie tells him to "go to 145 Wicker?but, I ain't promising anything." Jack does and meets a variety of weirdoes from a bartender who comes on to him to a psycho male nurse and a loony philosopher - but, no gun. His continued journey through life's underbelly bears him nothing more than a string of more strange characters. It is all about Jack finding himself, in the end, and not the gun.
"Too Much Sleep" starts off amiably enough with its main character, Jack, looking only to catch the maximum Z's out of life. Marc Palmieri is deadpan in his delivery of his slacker Jack persona and it works out for a short while. As he encounters an increasing number of oddball characters while searching for the gun, the film loses its quirkiness and just dabbles in weird behavior. As interest in the revolver is supplanted by other things in Jack's life, our interest is the film wanes, too.
The cast is made up with a good-natured collection of dedicated amateurs and semi-pros but none, with one exception, stand out. Pasquale Gaeta cuts a funny path as the Joe Pesci-like Eddie, spouting his knowing advice and guiding Jack through the maze of illicit weapons and sleazy people. He is uniformly amusing as Jack's muse.
The screenplay, by the director, pushes hard to get a rise out of the quirk meter and succeeds for the first half, but slowly loses its steam in the second. It's a decent calling card to get the young filmmaker his foot in the door of bigger budget mainstream film. "Too Much Sleep" is amiable, but not enough. I give it a C.
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