I kinda think he needed to throw out five ideas before this movie would've been legitimately satisfying. The big production of all of New York was enough of an idea to float a whole movie, but instead it became the backdrop for twelve other movies, and there's never really time to figure out what the hell is happening on that set. I kinda get that maybe that's "the point" or, more accurately, one of the many points, but I kinda don't care. At one point he's talking to the real wife who is talking to the fake him and the real him at the same time and possibly also the real Hazel and then they all get confused as to who she's talking to and for a second I wanted to figure it out and then I was like "Who cares?" Something about this movie to me felt like the end of an era. With David Foster Wallace having committed suicide, and this thing being all about death and blue-balling your audience in various ways, it's like the last stand for Depressed White Man's subjectivity.
SPOILER: I gotta say, though, that I laughed really loud and really hard when his daughter made him beg forgiveness at her deathbed, then refused to give it, then old-lady Jennifer Jason Leigh appeared out of nowhere and said "Are you happy?" That was definitely more funny than tiny-dad-corpse.
