Sherman's Way

In the American indie "Sherman's Way" a privileged, stuffed-shirt Yalie (Michael Shulman) making a beeline for an internship at a San Francisco law firm gets sidetracked in Napa Valley with a shaggy, past-his-prime Olympic skier named Palmer (James LeGros) who's nursing back to health a neglected mid-'70s MGB Roadster.
It's lost-in-life meets lust-for-life in the reliably regenerative wine country, which means most moviegoers could hand this emotionally stranded odd couple a road map of where they'll be by the closing credits.
"Sherman's Way" -- economically directed by Craig Saavedra from Tom Nance's uncomplicated script -- has a case of performance lopsidedness. LeGros, sporting impressively bearish facial undergrowth, brings plenty of comic intelligence and sneaky heart to his gruff, midlife exile. Ditto Enrico Colantoni as Palmer's Zen-and-the-art-of-cooking-and-auto-repair pal DJ. Shulman, though, who also produced, is a personality drag, unable to make us care that Sherman's off-putting arrogance warrants even by-the-numbers enlightenment. When the free-spirited girl (Brooke Nevin) shows up to help nudge uptight Sherman toward love -- the movie equivalent of an arranged coupling -- for once you'll believe she's better suited chilling with the older dude.
Da The Los Angeles Times, 13 marzo 2009