Paul Navarro Movies

Two enterprising friends attempt to keep their failing comic shop afloat as sales slump, interpersonal relationships wither, employees smoke pot in the back room, customers are berated, and starving artists begin to drop like flies in an independent workplace comedy shot on location at Charlie's Comic Book Store in Tucson, Arizona. John and Pete both have a lifelong passion for comic books, but reading a comic and running a successful business are two entirely different endeavors. As the favorite hobby of the friends and business partners slowly succumbs to the corrosive effects of commercialism, the struggle to keep their shop in business in a world of dead broke rack browsers becomes an uphill battle on a formidably steep incline. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Playwright Herb Gardner's patented combination of cynicism and sentimentality that worked so well in his A Thousand Clowns didn't quite jell in his subsequent The Goodbye People. This film version, adapted and directed by Gardner, stars Martin Balsam, who'd won an Oscar for his work in the 1966 cinemazation of Clowns. Based on Gardner's own childhood memories, the film casts Balsam as fiftysomething Max Silverman, who gets a new lease on life after surviving heart surgery. Ignoring the pleas of friends and family, Max decides to fulfill a life-long ambition by opening up a combination hot dog and tropical drink stand on a remote public beach. The only person other than Max to have faith in this benighted project is Arthur Korman (Judd Hirsch), who like Max has spent most of his life in a dead-end job. Somehow, Max and Arthur's unquenchable optimism draws a few other misfits into their plans. Striving hard for whimsy, The Goodbye People seems more like a 104-minute visit to a home for aging high-school geeks (not that there's anything wrong with that!) ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi