Wacky Wake-Up Call in ‘Too Much Sleep’

David Maquiling’s “Too Much Sleep” is a droll slacker comedy about a small-town New Jersey security guard whose search for his stolen pistol proves to be a depth charge: Marc Palmieri’s 24-year-old Jack doesn’t realize when he starts out that he’s actually embarking on a maturing journey of self-discovery.

The film, part of the wonderful Shooting Gallery series, unfolds as a shaggy-dog story, full of hilarious and outrageous twists that suggest that weirdness lies just below the surface of daily life seemingly at its most ordinary.

“Too Much Sleep” is essentially slight, and Maquiling, in his feature debut, shrewdly avoids laying on too much significance, content to let us discover for ourselves just what, if any, larger meanings Jack’s adventure contains. It’s a modest, non-pushy little movie, one that resists hitting you over the head to get laughs. However, if you just sit back and relax you may be surprised at how frequently you find yourself laughing out loud.

Jack gets too much sleep because he’s bored and his life is aimless. From the way he thinks and speaks, you sense he’s been exposed to college, but somehow he’s ended up back home, living with his widowed mother, never seen but heard; she’s clearly a nurturer but also rightly afraid he might lose his job if he doesn’t take it more seriously. In any event, Jack is riding a bus when a pretty young woman, Kate (Nicol Zanzarella) asks him if he might give up his seat to an older woman, Judy (Judy Sabo Podinker), who’s not feeling well. Jack unhesitatingly complies, only to wind up losing his prized gun.

Because Jack had inherited the pistol from his father and he probably would be hard-put financially to replace it easily, he’s suddenly shaken out of his aimlessness. His best friend Andrew (Philip Galinsky) advises him to have a talk with his Uncle Eddie (Pasqualte Gaeta), a retired county employee who brags of his “connections,” leaving you to wonder whether he means with the law enforcement community or the underworld or both.

Eddie is a voluble guy with dyed black hair who sounds like Lou Costello. Eddie declares confidently that Jack’s been the victim of a con, and he sends Jack off in search of the two women. Along the way, Eddie has one encounter after another, each individual possessed of more bizarre revelations than the last. Each has a story to tell, often revealing a philosophical take on life’s craziness.

As time passes, you have the sense that it matters much more that Jack find himself than the gun. You sense that Jack has a growing realization of this as his string of encounters forces him to think about what’s important to him and what his values are.

If Maquiling has a keen ear for the way people talk, he has no less a facility in inspiring his actors to go with the material, keeping a straight face no matter how absurd the circumstances. Maquiling has an admirable ease in his storytelling; he strings you along with confidence. More than anything else, he invites us to see the consequential in the seemingly inconsequential.

If “Too Much Sleep” seems unusually observant and effectively oblique in its humor and insights, it might stem from the fact that Maquiling was born in New Jersey to a Filipino emigre father and an American mother. In discovering Asian cinema, Maquiling discovered his calling and how central folk tales and legends are to culture. Consequently, Maquiling suggests in his film that it doesn’t matter so much whether his people’s assertions are true or not but that they believe them and act upon them accordingly.

Every moment in “Too Much Sleep” is therefore charged with ambiguity and uncertainty despite its casual air. All that really matters, the film is suggesting, is that Jack learn to believe in himself.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: language, adult themes and situations.

‘Too Much Sleep’

Marc Palmieri: Jack

Pasqualte Gaeta: Eddie

Nicol Zanzarella: Kate

Philip Galinsky: Andrew

A Shooting Gallery release. Writer-director David Maquiling. Producers Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente. Cinematographer Robert Mowen. Editor Jim Villone. Music Mitchell Toomey. Songs Murray Lightburn. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Exclusively at the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax, 7907 Beverly Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 777-FILM (No. 174) or (323) 653-3117.