Don't Think Twice

A film built around an improv theatre troupe. Six people go on stage together. They take a word from the audience and make up the rest on the spot. The rule is simple. Nobody pushes their own joke forward, everyone rescues everyone else, and the show runs as collective work. The rent on the room is not being paid. The building is sold and the troupe is given two months. News arrives the same week. The country's biggest sketch programme is looking for performers and two of them are called to audition. Jack is taken. His girlfriend Samantha had been called too but does not go. From there the film is a story of coming apart. Rehearsals, jealousy, half-finished celebrations, and a stage growing colder. Miles founded the troupe. He was called to the same programme years ago and was not taken; he still talks about it. What the narrative is interested in is not success but the threshold: the film looks for the place where talent and luck separate, and shows that the troupe cannot save anyone. Samantha's line is its most interesting part. She does not go because she does not want to, and the narrative does not present that as a loss. The improvised scenes really are improvised; most of the cast do this work on stage. Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, Chris Gethard, Kate Micucci and Mike Birbiglia are in the cast. Mike Birbiglia wrote, directed and appears in it. Who it is for: anyone who likes stories from behind the stage and comedy with a sting. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a lot of laughs; the film is about the comedy world but is mostly sad itself.