The Montreal World film festival gives us an opportunity to view films from around the globe but also a chance to support homegrown talent. “Ben’s At Home” was filmed in Toronto and is having its Canadian Premiere at this year’s festival.
Ben (Dan Abramovici) has recently been dumped by his longtime girlfriend and during his 30th birthday celebration out with his friends, he sees her with her new boyfriend. As he starts to reflect on everything he is going through, Ben decides enough is enough and vows to stay at home for good and give up on the “going out” life. This decision does not sit well with his brother and his buddies. He doesn’t care and spends most of his days surfing the internet. He finds some work online and even decides to date girls that he meets in chat rooms. Instead of meeting them at a restaurant or a movie theater, he invites them over to hang out.
Things get even more complicated when he begins a relationship with a young lady named Katie (Sarah Booth) that delivers his groceries. His brother starts an argument about Ben’s new lifestyle and she overhears this and doesn’t really know what to say about this strange behavior. As the people around him continue to react to his new way of living, he must make a decision on how beneficial all this really is.
The concept of this film was a bit different from your typical dating/relationship movie so that would count as a positive, however, the humor was bland and the story was a bit dull at times. Character development could have been better, especially since there is so much focus on this one main character who stays at home through most of the movie. All we really know is that he did this because he is not over his breakup with ex-girlfriend but do we really feel for him? Not really because we don’t really get to know him for who he really is. Could have been better.
