Kritiken

The only serious problem here arises when the post-plot rules are bent to accommodate a contrived rift and some wan life lessons that are congenitally discordant with the general stoner sensibility. Still, it's an amiable evening with good people, which seems to be central organizing principle of the new Beguiled Cinema venture.

The life lessons don't come off as such because writer-director Laura Colella maintains such a laid-back, intimate approach... The movie ingratiates itself with the viewer right away, making you feel like a welcome guest. In no time at all, the style becomes invisible (although Colella pulls off some elegant camera movements for a micro-budgeted production) and the film just hangs out with you.

It's a lived-in, unsentimental comedy about a community of smug but sympathetic intellectuals that, by film's end, becomes a little better-integrated... "Breakfast with "Curtis" is believably generous where most coming-of-age stories are unbelievable. It doesn't try too hard to impress you with its candor: it's just naturally likable.

The acting is as casual as the casting might suggest, at times bewilderingly so, but Ms. Colella appealingly underplays certain moments, as if taking a cue from her characters' let-it-ride attitude. Curtis gradually blends in and takes things in stride, and that seems a lesson in itself.

Writer-director Laura Colella hasn't strayed far from home (these characters are her actual housemates, rechristened into fiction), but her project feels like a casual experiment gone wonderfully right... It's less Wes Anderson–quirky than Jane Campion–woolly. Try it.