This might sound strange if you know anything about the movie, but it's a fairy tale. What do I mean by that? The premise isn't one-note, but the execution is, and while that might sound like a criticism, it's actually a sign that the movie was made with a particular character aesthetic in mind and writer/director Bob Byington never deviates from it. Like the sense of magic in Cinderella or romantic swashbuckling in Star Wars, Lousy Carter is a fairy tale of self-involved, middle age slackers.

Lousy (David Krumholtz) is a sad sack literature professor who – despite his lacklustre approach to life – is actually the most animated one in the film. The aesthetic I mentioned is that everyone else in his life, from his (supposed) best friend Kaminsky (Martin Starr) to his therapist (Stephen Root), ex wife Candela (Olivia Thirlby) to Kaminsky's wife Olivia (Jocelyn DeBoer) are all acerbic, stoic and sarcastic to a degree it'd be impossible for a single group of people to be in real life.

But it works here, as Lousy flails against the people around him in trying to elicit some understanding, maybe even sympathy – especially when his doctor finds something nasty and informs him he has six months to live.

But Lousy goes about eliciting sympathy/understanding by getting on with his life without telling anyone. He continues to teach a class on The Great Gatsby to an entitled group of millennials, particularly one he can't help but he drawn to (possibly sexually), Gail (Luxy Banner).

He intends to make a stop motion animated version of Nabakov's Lolita , a project he'll likely never get around to doing. He has lunch with his single-expression friend Kaminsky, conducts an affair with Kaminsky's wife on the side, tries to maintain an amicable relationship with is ex and brush off former classmate Dick (Macon Blair), who seems determined to be friends with him.

There's not a lot of point to the proceedings except for some smart, low-key comedy as Lousy (and us) wonders how uncaring his friends can really be about his plight – even though he hasn't told anyone – and it ends on a quite shocking note that somehow still doesn't break character.