NOTABLE QUOTES
"Recalling 70s dark comedies such as Altman's Brewster McCloud as well as the post-modern reflexiveness of Adaptation, the film's double-helix tale ingeniously interweaves pathos and hilarity, grief and imagination, entrapment and escape. In his remarkably assured debut, writer-director Kirt Gunn proves himself both a highly distinctive wordsmith and an accomplished visual stylist. Few recent first-time comedies have impressed me more."
Godfrey Cheshire
NY Times/Variety/Village Voice/Interview
"A terrific film."
Scott Foundas
NY Times/Variety/Village Voice/LA Weekly
"Lovely By Surprise is a playful and profound literary confection - a brilliantly original debut by Kirt Gunn, one of the most exciting prospects working in American indie cinema."
Nick Dawson
Filmmaker Magazine
"[The Seattle International Film Festival Jury] also gave a special mention to Kirt Gunn's Lovely By Surprise, noting its 'strong performances, notably Reg Rogers, as well as its ambitious narrative and stylistic choices.'"
Variety
NOTABLE REVIEWS
"The childish manner of Marian's characters is both precious and wise... Their author (and here I refer to both Marian and Kirt) loves them deeply and it shows. The peculiar logic under which they were created echoes in their every interaction: they know that the membrane between real and make-believe is permeable; and this teaches us that other barriers we have erected in our own lives may be similarly porous."
"Lovely By Surprise a great exploration of the artistic process and how creative people channel their experiences into becoming art. It's been a while since I've seen such a fully-realized vision from a first-time filmmaker. I'm not in the business of predicting future Great Directors, but I'm pretty eager to see what else Gunn has in store. I hope he keeps making movies, because Lovely By Surprise is a hell of a debut."
"Gunn isn't interested in mimicry nor does he engage in the kind of arch, distancing hipsterism that plagues so many small, first-time films. There's a genuine emotional core to his story and some of the film's more fanciful turns are a mechanism to approach it rather than a means to bury it."
"The brilliance of a truly great book is that at the end you are simply a different person. There are four movies that have made me feel something similar ... and Lovely By Surprise is one of them."
"(Reg) Rogers delivers an absolute powerhouse of a performance. He manages to be both laugh-out loud funny and heartbreakingly sad at the same time. Rogers deserves to be recognized at the end of the year."
"After experimenting with a few different ways of describing what Lovely By Surprise does, I think the best I can come up with is that it takes the standard quirky indie mold and deliberately, possibly even meanly, decides to be about real human beings rather than cartoons, and thus what starts out as a fanciful exercise in whimsy and style turns into a genuinely moving, slightly terrifying, but absolutely gentle and delicate look at how easily the human soul is bent and broken by loss and grief. It is a lovely, silly film that pulls none of its punches and tells no comforting lies. A paradox? A most ingenious paradox."
"Lovely By Surprise" is one of those films that upon a second viewing gains even more of my respect with the minor details becoming so evident from the first scene. Gunn deftly reveals only what we need to know, unraveling only bits and pieces of the yarn until Marian is able to succumb to her own story. By then, Gunn already has us tied up in knots."
"Another of its pleasures is first-time director Kirt Gunn's sure handling of his actors: he elicits fine performances from most of them, particularly the old pros. Pendleton is the very model of the toothily oily professor, more interested in getting into Marian's pants than teaching her to write."
"Gunn's beautifully acted and distinctively shot Kaufmanesque debut, combining three intertwining narratives is a funny, imaginative, and very moving examination of loss and grief and the redemptive possibilities of the artistic process."
"The writing for this movie is astounding. The film is written and directed by Kirt Gunn. This is his first feature as the director and a writer, which shocks me. There have not been many talents out there that catch my attention like this on their first attempt."
"In this stunning, offbeat film, an aspiring novelist tries to kill off her protagonist - on the advice of her ex-lover/professor - with real-world repercussions. Meanwhile, an unstable car salesman tries to cope with the death of his wife and the subsequent silent treatment of his young daughter. The two storylines dovetail in and out of each other's orbit nicely, with the result a movie that's at turns joyous and devastating."
FESTIVAL REVIEWS
"Although the cast is not well known, they bring Gunn's strange characters to life. Preston and Pendleton do a terrific job of portraying the nuances in a male/female mentor/protege relationship. They walk the fine line between trust and distrust, love and lust, and altruism and self-interest."
Leslie Halpern
Suite 101
suite101.com
"With a talented cast and a creative script, Kirt Gunn creates a bittersweet world with a delicate humor that keeps things light and entertaining. Lovely By Surprise also offers a nice twist in the end that'll leave you thinking."
"This wonderfully written film follows a new writer as she fumbles her way through the challenges of finishing her debut novel. Featuring a cast, which delivers strong performances, a story that overlaps the seams of past/present & fantasy/reality, an eclectic soundtrack and revealing art direction, we're definitely hoping to see this film break out of the circuit and onto the big screen."
"Many comparisons have been made to Charlie Kaufman and rightly so, since Lovely By Surprise, pulls a lot of the same tricks that Kaufman has used to make a name for himself. Another comparison can be made with Stranger Than Fiction, which has Will Ferrell as the protagonist of Emma Thompson's novel, as well as exploring the feelings of an author who is thinking of killing off her beloved character. In this matter, Lovely By Surprise comes out on top as the more nuanced and affecting of the two, and with an ending that is vastly more satisfying."
"Like many other movies of it's type, one of the real joys of this film is sitting down afterwards with a cup of coffee and thinking about it, untangling the threads and ideas until you can finally say 'Aha!', and so it comes with the recommendation that you do exactly that after watching."
"Gunn brings a minimalist look to his movie and stages its bizarre antics in an improvisational way that is reminiscent of scat. Unpredictable and unabashedly independent, Lovely By Surprise illustrates the unlikely path of the creative process."
