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Sol Tryon’s directing debut, written by Mike O’Connell and Peter Kline, blunders into the trap of excessive strangeness by featuring not only one idiot, but an entire, carnivalesque world of them. With no one reliably normal around, the film lacks the crucial alchemy of clown and foil that all comedies demand – a voice of reason to counterbalance the shenanigans of, in this case, a pompous windbag and self-proclaimed genius named K. Roth Binew. As director, Tryon could’ve insinuated himself, the narrator, as Binew’s foil, and commented on his unfolding story through ironic choices in style, performance or editing. But Tryon is as giddy on the script’s prevailing goofiness as O’Connell and the rest, and, as a result, his film rapidly collapses in on itself.

With only a day left to live, Binew sets off on an odyssey to visit his family, friends, and enemies to invite them to his “living wake” and, in the process, clear up lifelong grievances and heartaches. He’s joined by Mills Joaquin (Jesse Eisenberg), his simpering and ingratiating servant, who chauffeurs his master across the countryside on a bicycle rickshaw. In episodic fashion, the story follows Binew as he romances his one-time, now elderly nanny during a woodsy picnic, bickers with a neighbor, a librarian, and then a clockmaker, visits a prostitute, then a psychic, and clears the air with his estranged mother and brother, and with the ghost of his father – a man whose sudden, long-ago disappearance has always traumatized him.

In terms of its twee visual design and daft central character, “The Living Wake” owes much to Wes Anderson (especially “Rushmore”) and to Terry Gilliam. In its theme of life as a circus of memories, it harks back to Fellini’s “8½.” Yet, for all its echoing of worthy precursors, Tryon’s film stumbles for lack of genuine feeling and conviction. While Binew blusters away on topics of mortality and the meaning of life from beginning to end, we never get a sense that the film takes these ideas seriously. They’re there only to provide fodder for Binew’s absurd wordplays and antics. And if they don’t matter to the film any more than that, why should they matter to us?

The performances come fast and loose, ranging from student-film terrible to the caliber of pretty good sketch comedy. Eisenberg’s work as the sidekick benefits from his ability to convey sweetness and vulnerability, but for all the actor’s charm, his character is too weak to counteract Binew’s presence. Falstaffian buffoons like Binew can be comedy dynamite, but only in the right hands, and never as the sole occupiers of the spotlight – they need to be deployed carefully as not to overwhelm everything around them and smother the audience. But Tryon, Kline, and McConnell allow Binew, their film’s resident Falstaff, to command their story’s center from scene one – comically and morally – with no one around capable of challenging it, so it’s no surprise that “The Living Wake” gets swallowed up by the black hole of Binew’s enormous personality. Credit O’Connell for turning in a bravura performance, though, recalling the old-school slapstick of Robert Benchley or Joe E. Brown. But it’s all too much and, after Binew’s sings his second song — as abrasive as his first — we get the sense that O’Connell is having all the fun, leaving the rest of us to suffer through the indulgences of this aggressively awful comedy.

Grade: D

Directed by: Sol Tryon
Written by: Peter Kline, Mike O’Connell
Cast: Mike O’Connell, Jesse Eisenberg, Jim Gaffigan, Ann Dowd, Clay Allen, Ami Ankin, Harlan Baker, Bryan Brown, Rebecca Cornerford, Matthew Cowles, Paul D’Amato, Jay Devlin

Writer-director Chris D’Arienzo, adapting Frank Turner Hollon’s comic novel, aims for an offbeat yet heartfelt take on a man’s search for meaning after losing the only two meaningful things in his life: his testicles. “Barry Munday’s” namesake dimwit fancies himself a ladies’ man, hitting on every ready and willing female who crosses his path. That is, until the day he gets his testicles crushed by the outraged, trumpet-wielding father of one potential conquest.

His testicles damaged beyond repair, doctors promptly remove them, leaving Barry in a terrible existential and sexual funk. His spirits pick up, however, when a young woman, Ginger Farley (Judy Greer), notifies him that she’s pregnant with his child, and sues him for paternity. The befuddled Barry has no memory of his and Ginger’s sexual encounter, but news of possible fatherhood offer redemption, a sense that his seed has left behind a legacy and there’s hope for the future after all.

But Barry’s efforts to be involved with Ginger’s pregnancy hit roadblocks when Ginger turns out to be a disdainful sourpuss with intimidating parents (Malcolm McDowell and Cybill Shepherd) and a spitfire of a sister (Chloë Svigney) who persists in trying to sabotage Barry’s goodwill with her sexual advances.

Barry’s only respite comes from his warm relationship with his headstrong mother, Carol (Jean Smart, in a finely balanced seriocomic performance). Having grown up without a father, it’s clear that Barry’s inherent sweetness comes from his mother’s nurturing. Indeed, their relationship is among “Munday’s” core strengths, as D’Arienzo gives Smart and Wilson room to develop a convincing mother-son rapport.

Gradually, Ginger’s resistance to Barry drops away, and the couple prepares for the home birth that she insists on. Incidentally, “Barry Munday’s” birthing scene ranks alongside the “insemination party” from this year’s other paternity-themed dud “The Switch” as two of the most idiotic to be thought up for movies about conception and childbirth.

Ginger’s home birth involves her squatting in a wading pool set up in her a living room, screaming and pushing away while a midwife and virtually the entire cast of the movie (including the family priest) stand poolside egging her on as if they’re at a horserace. The scene is junk because it has no bearing in emotional or dramatic truth – something D’Arienzo, in the movie’s press notes, claims as his guiding mantra – and because none of these characters, given their histories and dynamics, would ever find themselves in such scene together. Not a single detail in this scene rings true; this core event in Barry and Ginger’s lives is played for contrived, dishonest laughs. The resulting response, at the screening I attended anyway, was a heavy, awkward silence.

D’Arienzo’s screenplay and direction goes for a cross between naturalism and absurdity, but it’s largely a queasy, oil-and-water blend. His slow-burn comic timing never lives up to his scenes’ “ha-ha” moments, which usually come in the form of dopey looks, unfunny put-downs and tired observations. Greer’s performance, like most others’ in the cast, never rises above a script that draws its characters in broad strokes, and her toneless delivery and frumpy demeanor outstay their first-act welcome.

The bright and versatile Wilson again proves his worth as both a comic and dramatic presence. He’s spent several years now honing his on-screen persona in a variety of roles, but in largely subpar fare like “Hard Candy,” “Little Children,” the aforementioned “The Switch,” and now this. In surer hands, he may yet find a role and a project worthy of his talents.

Grade: C-

Directed by: Chris D’Arienzo
Written by: Chris D’Arienzo
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Judy Greer, Shea Whigham, Jean Smart, Malcom McDowell, Chloë Svigney, Billy Dee Williams, Mae Whitman, Cybill Shepherd