Writing, directing, and starring, Michael Showalter ("The State" and "Stella") turns in perfectly average romantic comedy that's low on all-out laughs but will keep you at least half-smiling for most of its running time. The film begins with an illustration of its freshly coined title: a "baxter," the opening monologue helpfully explains, is the odd man out—the guy who, in a traditional romantic comedy, gets dumped when the leading man returns for the grand finale.
And that's just what we see happen to Elliot Sherman (Showalter), a text book baxter who reads the dictionary for fun and wears impossibly dorky hats. Elliot gets left at the altar when Bradley (Justin Theroux) returns "from Malta" to wed his college sweetheart Caroline (Elizabeth Banks). According to the formula, Elliot has to endure more than the usual dose of humiliation before he finally realizes that his true love was there for him all along, in the shape of meek temp Cecil (Michelle Williams). With her wide eyes and red bangs, Williams is irrepressibly cute, and the movie lights up whenever she's on screen.
If it sounds like Showalter turned the convention of romantic comedy on its head—that's only a trick, and an after-the-credits joke acknowledges as much. "The Baxter" suffers from the same handicaps as its title character: it's a little too stiff, a little too timid, and it feels like it's trying a little too hard. By the end of the film, Elliot learns, "everybody's right for somebody," and I'm sure this baxterly film will find an audience that will fall in love with it.
