Suits Reviews

This scrappy little comedy about advertising tries so hard it seems really mean to point out that it has all the grit of a workplace sitcom. Recent college grad Ken Tuttle (Randy Perlstein, the poor man's Eric Stoltz) is wage slaving at old-school Madison Avenue ad agency Cranston Associates. He and his scruffy, eccentric friends and colleagues are "creatives," and as such thoroughly despised by the firm's sleek account executives, the titular suits, who look down their noses at the "creeps and weirdos" who actually come up with ad campaigns. While big boss Thomas Cranston (Robert Klein) away, the back-stabbing Peter Haverford (Larry Pine) engineers the firing of long-time creative director George Parkyn (Tony Hendra) just as the company is supposed to be coming up with a campaign for a crucial new sanitary napkin account. The pad, its creators crow, lets menstruating women's whoozie-whatzises breathe (that's a big joke, repeated frequently). Meanwhile, over at the hottest shop in town, a cabal of pretentious, high-attitude types who all look like Prada models are cooking up a competing campaign for the feminine hygiene accessory, touted by its developers as a breakthrough. Writer-director Eric Weber did time in advertising (he directed the "Be a Pepper" ads) and apparently came away secure in the self-deluding belief that advertising copywriters and designers are artists of the true, tortured by philistines who thwart their personal visions. If you don't believe that too, a lot of the discord between Ken's rebellious pals and the hateful suits will seem a lot less funny than it was meant to be. Amid all the mild comedy, however, is one scene of pure brilliance: The snotty rival ad company's finished presentation, a montage of images of empowered women, building to a pretentious punch line. It's so on the money it hurts.