Paul Albe

Henry Fool -- With his sixth feature film, Hal Hartley, brings us a riotous epic of friendship, ambition, and forgiveness which is as emotional as it is funny, as thoughtful as it is disturbing.

Henry Fool -- Simon is a garbage man with a poet s spirit, an addled mom, and an angry sad eyed sister. Parker Posey and Thomas Jay Ryan meet Henry Fool in this bizarrely dark indie comedy.

Acclaimed writer/director Hal Harley's (Amateur, Flirt), Henry Fool is a Faustian black comedy that will leave you screaming with laughter at its wild mix of vulgarity, antic humor and deeply-felt emotion. Intense, nerdy young garbageman Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) sulks through a sexless, humiliating lower-class existence. He shares a house in Queens, NY, with his clinically depressed mother Mary (Maria Porter) and sarcastic, promiscuous sister Fay (Parker Posey). Into their mundane existence comes Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a freewheeling, depraved faux intellectual and writer who inspires the repressed Simon to come out of his shell by writing a book-length poem. He also begins an affair with Fay, the two making love at the most awkwardly inappropriate moments. At Henry's goading, Simon timidly peddles his manuscript to an unscrupulous publisher, setting in motion an unforeseen chain of events both tragic and hilarious.

With his sixth feature film, Hal Hartley, brings us a riotous epic of friendship, ambition, and forgiveness which is as emotional as it is funny, as thoughtful as it is disturbing.

With his sixth feature film, Hal Hartley, brings us a riotous epic of friendship, ambition, and forgiveness which is as emotional as it is funny, as thoughtful as it is disturbing.