Fat chance

The Tao of Steve is movie-comedy gold

by Peter Keough

THE TAO OF STEVE. Directed by Jenniphr Goodman. Written by Duncan North with Jenniphr and Greer Goodman. With Donal Logue, Greer Goodman, Kimo Wills, Ayelet Kaznelson, David Aaron Baker, and Nina Jaroslaw. A Sony Pictures Classics release. At the Avon.

ou may be surprised to learn that there's not one character named Steve in co-writer/director Jenniphr Goodman's invigoratingly original debut. The title of her film actually refers to a philosophy of cool, a nonchalant way of looking at the world that's, well, guaranteed to get a guy laid. Steve McQueen, Hawaii Five-O's Steve McGarrett, The Six Million Dollar Man's Steve Austin: they've got it. Anyone less -- think Steve Forbes or Steve Seagal -- is a poor, pussy-whipped schmuck. Or, in the parlance of this romantic comedy, a "Stu."

The most enthusiastic proponent of the Tao is Dex (Donal Logue), an underachieving, hyper-articulate kindergarten teacher hyper-articulate kindergarten teacher who's loosely based on co-writer Duncan North. A former big man on campus, Dex is now just, uh, big. But that doesn't diminish his Steve-ness -- in fact, when we first meet this Santa Fe slacker, at his 10-year college reunion, he's screwing a married temptress (Ayelet Kaznelson) . . . in the school library. With nary enough time to zip his fly, he then reels in a cute undergrad bartender by comparing the divergent mixings of a Long Island Iced Tea to a world-religion survey course. It's this witty charm, laced with a seductive, deviously contrived blend of Taoist self-discipline, Buddhist detachment, and Heideggerian impassivity, that makes Dex so very, very Steve. He is, as he brags to his buddies, the guy "who never tries to impress the women but always gets the girl."

That is, until he meets Syd (co-writer Greer Goodman, sister of Jenniphr). Although this lithe opera-set designer who plays drums and likes motorcycles is as hip as Ali MacGraw, Syd doesn't instantly crumple for our makeshift McQueen. As played by the utterly beguiling Goodman, she's one of the most sparkling heroines we've seen in some time: a female lead whose desirability manifests itself not in a pair of full lips or full breasts but in a full life. She's enough to make a smitten Dex let down his Kierkegaard.

Circumstance -- and some blatant manipulation on Dex's part -- fling the two together, giving Dex the chance to spout his amusing, sometimes disarmingly accurate theories on dating. Thanks to a steady run of social-gathering scenes during which someone invariably asks Dex a question like "What do you look for in a woman?", the film is pure talk. And though the dialogue is fresh, thought-provoking, and exceedingly clever, the quest to punctuate many exchanges with a Dexian maxim often lends a sitcommy ba-da-bum rhythm to the story. That's not to say that the supporting characters simply serve as straight men: Syd holds her own, and Kimo Wills as Dex's puppyish, advice-needy roommate Dave (Kimo Wills) limns a sweet, comically subtle performance as the epitome of Stu.

And despite its slight story, the film can be genuinely touching, as Syd -- whose breezy badinage appears to mask a mysterious hurt -- and Dex figure out just what they mean to each other. In a summer that's already seen such gender-stereotyping trash as Boys and Girls, this entry offers hope for the seemingly soulless genre of romantic comedy. Eschewing false sentiments and heavy-handed love themes (the original soundtrack serves up tongue-in-cheek ditties like "You're So 1988" and one that rhymes "MacGraw" and "Peckinpah"), Jenniphr Goodman reminds us of the sexual power of a weird mind, as well as the fluttery thrill of finding someone else who loves, say, Josie and the Pussycats.

Anchoring Steve is a tour de force performance by the incredibly versatile Logue, an actor still best known for his greaseball shtick as "Jimmy the Cab Driver" on MTV, though he's appeared in a slew of films, including this year's Reindeer Games and The Patriot. More than just a quip-happy provocateur, Logue's doughy Dex is a complex, humanizing portrait of a man hiding one ton of insecurity and self-loathing beneath his verbal and sexual swagger. Yet thanks to the director's insightful gaze, this seemingly amoral Don Juan upends our gender assumptions instead of reinforcing them (Tao may be the first film in which it's the dejected guy who makes a beeline for the ice-cream tub). Likewise, the script never emasculates Dex for the sake of self-righteous punishment or easy redemption. We see with honesty, affection, and intelligence what happens when one smart sluggard tries growing up instead of just out.

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Love handler

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