A fun little movie featuring an excellent performance from Perry.
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Matthew Perry, best known as Chandler from "Friends," proves himself to be more than a broad comedic actor in "Numb," essentially an autobiography of writer/director Harris Goldberg´s fight against depersonalization. Basically, this is the feeling of not belonging in your own body, looking at the things you do and not having any emotion about them. This disorder affects not only Hudson Milbank´s (Perry) writing career-and writing partner Tom (Kevin Pollack)-but also his quest to find the one woman who will love him.
Casting Perry in the lead role of a dark romance was precipitated, according to Goldberg´s commentary, by watching the actor´s guest star stints on "The West Wing." I´d argue, though, Milbank has more in common with Matt Albie from "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." For starters, there are superficial similarities between the two. Both are writers and are in recovery from one thing or another. Albie and Milbank also need to work…at least, Tom does, leading to the supposition Hudson does as well.
Then there´s the personality. Chandler found himself to equally be the butt of the joke or the comedian, with bigger than life emotions and not much use for subtlety. Yet when the camera is pushed up close to Perry, allowing him to work in a comedy sub-genre, he is able to display a depth of emotion we´re not used to seeing with him. Here is a man desperate to find out what is wrong, to make his life complete and, ostensibly, grow up. Though Goldberg never comes out and says it, the majority of Hudson´s issue comes in the form of his parents. Specifically, his father ("The X Files" Cigarette Smoking Man William B. Davis).
We only meet the elder Milbank once or twice in the production; those few scenes tell us everything we need to know about their relationship. Dad Peter coddles Hudson even when he is a fully formed adult capable of taking care of himself. The writer begins to hyperventilate during a trip home; Mom says to let him take care of it. Peter rushes his son to the emergency room. Hudson is a needy, near man-child of a person, incapable of taking himself or others seriously. Is the reason he has a drawer full of stolen pens because he gets a thrill out of it? Possibly (and Goldberg says he did the same thing as a youngster), though it´s equally possible the adult Hudson hopes to get caught, leading to attention he doesn´t get in his own life.
Which seems a bit backward, honestly, when other aspects of his life are taken into account. It is made clear several times Tom needs Hudson to sell the scripts he writes: Tom is the writer, Hudson is the salesman. So, at least in that respect, Hudson has an enormous weight on his shoulders. The person who truly understands him-the love interest, if you will-is Sarah (Lynn Collins). They meet at a pitch meeting and, shortly thereafter, she accepts Hudson´s world without reservation. She turns out to be the first person, including doctors, pharmacists, family and even Tom, to wrap their arms around the depersonalization. There´s even a sweet little scene where they discuss what they want out of a relationship. Sarah´s answer, and the way it plays into the climax of the film, should bring a tear to your eye.
Goldberg and the crew try to bring the sensation of being numb in your own body across, yet it is a tall order. Film is a passive medium. The people on screen interact; we watch. The production tries, though, to get us to understand depersonalization through a couple fancy effects shots: Hudson talking to a person in sped up fashion with disco ball-esque flashing. It´s not the best representation of the experience in my estimation. The result is akin to a drug or alcohol bender more than a psychological disorder.
That being said, as I alluded to in the beginning, "Numb" rests on the talents of Perry. Without him in the lead, and his ability to play subdued humor, the entire film would have been for naught. Goldberg never had Perry in mind for the role, considering him too broad a comic actor for Hudson. Despite his personae as Chandler, we never see that character in Milbank. Rather, Perry brings an everyman quality to the part, a neurotic and relaxed feeling combined into one single person. Some beard scruff, thrown together clothes and a sometimes-vacant stare in his eyes bring the character together.
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[release]23781[/release]