From Omeleto.
A man is sent to another dimension.
THE INFINITE ALTERNATE REALITIES OF LARRY SHERMAN is used with permission from Dov Torbin. Learn more at https://dovtorbin.com.
Larry Sherman is a middle-aged man who doesn’t have much going for him. He doesn’t have much of a career to speak of, though his habit of herbal self-medication is thriving. He can’t even work up the nerve to talk to the attractive neighbor he sees in his hallway every day.
When a local team of scientists needs a volunteer to send to another dimension as part of an experiment, Larry signs up, hoping for a fresh start in life. But the experiment doesn’t go as planned, forcing Larry to confront where he is in life.
Directed and written by Dov Torbin, this warmly goofy short sci-fi comedy is a loose-limbed amble of a narrative, as a lonely middle-aged man seeks a fresh start in life. Some people change careers or partners when faced with a mid-life crisis. But Larry chooses a different way to course correct: he decides to travel to an alternate reality as part of an experiment conducted by a group of suspiciously off-brand scientists. The result is an amusing and entertaining lark that is a bit like Larry: it doesn’t take itself too seriously on the surface, but underneath is a core of genuine yearning and questioning.
There’s plenty of playfulness in the film’s tone and aesthetics, from the pointed lo-fi nature of the scientific equipment to the 80s-synthesizer soundtrack to the broadly comedic characterization of the scientists in charge of the experiment. A loopy animated sequence adds to the goofiness, all building up a world that feels resolutely ordinary, especially for a story with a sci-fi element.
But the film’s ordinariness, with its muted cinematography, messy apartments and ad-hoc basement laboratories, is part of the point. It’s what Larry wants to escape from, so his disappointment when the experiment fails is real and sharp. Actor Bryant Carroll plays Larry as a salt-of-the-earth sad sack, a college stoner who never moved on from that lifestyle. There’s a certain hangdog humor in his reactions and expressions, but he also deftly plays Larry’s collapsed hopes with an understated authenticity, realizing that he’s stuck in life and must make the best of it.
Entertaining, a bit silly and ultimately endearing, THE INFINITE ALTERNATE REALITIES OF LARRY SHERMAN riffs off sci-fi genre tropes of alternate dimensions. But it has a mischievous, perhaps even satiric take on them, one that feels true to everyday human experience and makes for an illustration of a certain Zen-like self-improvement maxim: "Wherever you go, there you are." Larry discovers that he can’t escape the reality of human nature. But with the film’s mischievous, witty ending, he does find some glimmer of hope, which gives him proof and encouragement that he can change and make choices to make life more fulfilling.
