Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003)

Description[from Freebase]

Melvin Goes to Dinner is a 2003 American film adaptation of Michael Blieden's stage play Phyro-Giants!, directed by Bob Odenkirk. Blieden wrote the screenplay from his stage play, and he also stars in the film (as he did in the Los Angeles stage production), along with Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price and Annabelle Gurwitch. Melvin is a onetime medical student who has dropped out of medical training and now works (after a fashion) in a planning office of an unnamed city; the office supervisor is his big sister, so she "mothers" him instead of making him perform well. Melvin accidentally makes telephone contact with an old friend, and they decide to meet that evening for dinner. The friend decides to arrive early at the restaurant for drinks with a lady friend. By the time the dinner appointment arrives, there are 4 people involved, all of them connected in some way to at least one of the other parties. The evening passes in a leisurely dinner with much conversation, sometimes intimate. The connections between the parties are revealed throughout the evening. The movie includes several flashbacks, which at the start are not explained but which become understandable by the end.

Review

It's My Dinner With Andre and a Couple of His Friends. Bob Odenkirk's slacker version of the classic 'talking around the table' drama is suprisingly stolen not by the titular Melvin but by his confused pal Joey (Matt Price), whose tale of a near-miss infidelity trumps anything else in the movie. The rest of the time it's a not-quite-believable riff on sex and other tawdry matters clearly torn from the theater -- with some memorable cutaways to the likes of an 'insane' Jack Black seeking mental help.
by Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com
Portions from Freebase, licensed under CC-BY and Wikipedia licensed under the GFDL