TV Reviews : Steven Wright Takes His Despair, Hatches a Movie

Anyone who’s never seen Steven Wright before will probably be pleasantly surprised by the novel sight of this near catatonic figure whose lips hatch mental bubbles of bizarre non sequiturs, such as “I dreamed I was the captain of a boat inside a bottle,” as though the single last spark of resistance against the frozen tundra of despair resided in the stark one-liner.

But anyone who has seen him before, even as he appears in his new short movie, “The Appointments of Dennis Jennings” (airing at 10 tonight on HBO), will probably feel a touch of deja vu: A little of Wright goes a long way.

Wright plays a restaurant waiter who goes to a psychiatrist to try to slip a crack of light into a near-paralyzing unhappiness, but such is the ineluctable pull of his moroseness that even a psychiatrist can’t stand him.

There’s a strong suggestion that no psychiatrist is anything other than appalled by his job, or wacko, or both. That’s one of a number of very witty touches in this movie, co-written by Wright and Mike Armstrong, directed by Dean Parisot and produced by Paula Masur.

Rowan Atkinson as a psychiatrist is a perfect model of scurvy, sensual prevarication, and Laurie Metcalf does well as Wright’s girlfriend. Cinematic values are first-rate and unusually well-developed for a short film.

The problem remains Wright’s inability to find some deeper coherence in his nebbishy inertia. He’s one of those people who can cast a pall onto a room simply by entering it; the movie doesn’t do enough to balance out his dense emotional claustrophobia.

“The Appointments of Dennis Jennings” has been nominated for an Academy Award in the best live-action short film category. Other play dates include: Thursday, March 14, 18 and 22.