I'll put
Super Sucker in here because it is a true independent. Apparently Jeff Daniels started a production company and made an indie comedy in his native state of Michigan that made money even though it may not have played outside of the state. So why not try again?
Daniels is writer, director, and star in a comedy about door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen. His distributorship isn't having much success, but when he discovers that his wife is using one of the attachments to pleasure herself, he finds the secret to selling more Super Suckers than he can stock.
My full-length review is
here, so I won't go into a lot of detail. The general idea could have made for a good comedy. (I wonder what Christopher Guest might have done with it.) Focusing on the naughty use of the vacuum cleaners, though, would have worked better as a scene or a running gag, not for the conceit of almost the entire movie. The film never has the conviction to follow through all the way. Instead, it's a rather tame comedy despite how it might sound.
There isn't one laugh in it, unless jokes around the words
sucks and
blows do it for you. The film opened regionally, here in the midwest, but didn't do too well according to the box office numbers I saw. No surprise as two other saps saw it when I did, and neither of them laughed once.
I admire Daniels' effort to make a small, independent comedy in his old stomping grounds. This movie is pretty bad, though. Still, it's an accomplishment of some sort when he can get it on a decent number of screens. The film had no ad campaign aside from a spot in the local paper. I didn't even know it was opening here until the day prior. I wish the multiplexes that took a chance on this would do the same thing with an arthouse film occasionally.
Manna From Heaven also has a nice story behind the production. Five sisters have made three films now, with this being the most recent. Here two of them direct. Their mother wrote the screenplay. All appear in the film, with one of the sisters having a major role. The cast is recognizable, with Shirley Jones, Cloris Leachman, Louise Fletcher, Seymour Cassel, Shelley Duvall, Jill Eikenberry, Frank Gorshin, and Wendie Malick appearing.
It's a feel-good indie comedy. A family gets a "gift from God" one day. Thousands of dollars blow out the back of an armored car and into their lives. Years later, though, they learn it was just a "loan" and that they must pay it back.
Manna From Heaven means well and is generally watchable; however, it's too long and unpolished in ways that local/independent films can be. (The sisters are from Buffalo and shot the film there, but one of the directors lives in this area.) It isn't very clear at the beginning that the "family" is not all related but a collection of people living in this one house. Keeping track of who's who isn't the easiest thing in the world either.
Basically, it's a movie for people who are looking for a nice, clean pic with a good message. (It isn't, per se, a religious film, although Catholicism informs the actions of some characters.) While it may not sound like high praise--it isn't--the film is competently made and should hold some appeal for its intended audience.
The sisters are taking the film city to city on a "whistle stop" tour. They've secured screens at a minimum of four theaters when it opens in Columbus at the end of February. The film is self-distributed. They claim some studios had interest in it, but the sisters felt the film would be best served by building word of mouth in cities rather than opening on a slow platform release starting in the biggest cities. Yes, they'd love to have the same thing happen to them that happened with
My Big Fat Greek Wedding. (It won't. As generally ambivalent as I am about
MBFGW, it is better and more rewarding.) Good luck to 'em, though.
