‘Experience’ sketches self-delusion

Published 4:28 pm Thursday, August 20, 2009

If you love Wes Anderson’s 1998 film “Rushmore,” then a quick description of “The Marc Pease Experience” makes it sound suspiciously like an unofficial sequel.

In “Rushmore” Jason Schwartzman starred as a prep-school wunderkind, notable for his many projects, especially some highly original theatrical work.

In “The Marc Pease Experience,” Schwartzman plays a former high-school theater geek, now eight years past his glory days, who’s still trying to make it in showbiz.

Alas, all resemblances between the films end there. If the “Rushmore” character was a whip-smart go-getter, Marc Pease is a self-deluding loser, and the comedy stylings of this movie leave a rather sour taste behind.

Sour, but sometimes funny. Marc Pease is clinging to the remnants of his vocal group, the Meridian 8, even though the membership is now down to four people.

He’s ready to sell his condo and use the funds to record a demo record. Now if only he can get his hotshot high-school drama teacher, Jon Gribble (Ben Stiller), to produce the record.

Although Ben Stiller has the second lead in this film, he walks away with it. This is one of Stiller’s razor-sharp portraits of an awful person, and Stiller is all over it: vain, self-infatuated, a giant fish in the tiny pond of his own mind.

The story is set during the day Gribble’s production of “The Wiz” opens at the high school. Marc’s girlfriend Meg (Anna Kendrick, late of the “Twilight” franchise) is in the show — the same show that led to Marc’s own tragic onstage meltdown eight years earlier.

Schwartzman is just as good at playing clueless characters as Stiller is at playing vanity, so he has some moments. Check his sitcom star in “Funny People” for more evidence.

It all makes for an interesting mix, a decent rental if you’re a fan of Stiller or Schwartzman, but kind of a mess. If there’s ever a “Rushmore” sequel, let’s hope Schwartzman and Wes Anderson are in talks.