Moore plays a wallflower who goes full Method in a film that's like "Waiting for Guffman" made by the Coen brothers at their most rivetingly unhinged. It’s rare these days to find comedy and humanity on the same plate — and even more rare to see comedy nuzzling up to mystery. (I don’t mean mystery as in crime-solving; I mean the mystery of existence.) But Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut,” a small-town-theater comedy driven by big ideas, is a funny and dizzying mind-bender. It’s like “Waiting for Guffman” made by the Coen brothers at their most rivetingly unhinged.
Eisenberg, as he proved two years ago in the brilliant “A Real Pain,” is a grounded filmmaker (he loves reality). But here he’s working on a high wire of matter-of-fact satire that edges, just barely, into the surreal. Yet it’s still reality-based.
At heart, the film is a twisted love letter to the glory of community theater. What holds it together is the suppleness of Eisenberg’s voice as a writer-director (the wit that singes, the story that never stops poking around corners), and the utterly astonishing performance of Julianne Moore, who plays a crumpled wallflower in dire need of blooming. Moore’s Mona Friedman is a New Jersey homemaker who has become a Stepford zombie, because no one seems to need her anymore.
Her twins, Matty (Joan Diamand) and Maya (Becca Suskauer), are nearly adults, and though they’re still living at home they’ve already checked out. Her husband, Howard (Patrick Fabian), is a handsome stiff-necked jerk who treats Mona like an accessory. And she’s such a fearful, passive people pleaser that none of this is in any danger of changing.
Moore, with red eyes and translucent skin, gives off the aura of a damaged doll. In the opening scene, set in the Brook Theater, she tries out for a small role in the annual local production of “Nosy Neighbors,” and her audition is so weak that we don’t see how she could possibly get the part. It goes instead to Serena Cherry (Bernadette Peters), a Broadway wannabe who lands any role she wants. (There’s a poster of her in the lobby as the lead in a production of “Evita.”) But then, late one night, Mona gets a call from the musical’s director, Jerry (Paul Giamatti).
Serena has bowed out; he’s got no one else to do the part. So Mona is in. (It helps that she ripped off all the phone-number tags on a local flyer for the audition.) Mona comes into rehearsal the next morning (the cast has been at it for several weeks), and what we instantly see is that “Nosy Neighbors,” an upbeat musical about the residents of a downscale apartment building, is a corny but oddly sturdy piece of third-rate hokum – it’s like “Rent” redone by Corky St. Clair. (The songs, which Eisenberg composed, sound like Jonathan Larson-by-numbers.) Mona is playing Miss Danielle, the building super, a tough nut who wears a tool belt and has the signature line, “Rent’s due!” Not exactly an acting challenge.
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