HAM & EGGS

Available at Laemmle virtual theaters...

Ham: A Musical Memoir--"I fear that my karmic lesson in this lifetime is humility. But I think that lesson is beneath me."

So quips Sam Harris, the Star Search singing prodigy who went on to Broadway and TV success, at the end of the title number of the nearly one-man show adapted from his book Ham--Slices of Life. He says it with an admirable, Nathan Lane-worthy ironic grandiosity, too.

In this filming of his stage show, shot in front of a live audience at the Pasadena Playhouse under the direction of Andrew Putshoegl, Harris recounts his childhood and youth in Sand Springs, Oklahoma: his love of musical theatre, his growing awareness that he was "different" in a way that was dangerous in small-town Oklahoma; his humiliations and brushes with tragedy, his distant father, his mentors; the joy he took in performance. In its broad strokes, it's a familiar story, but a story that works every time, and Harris shuttles effortlessly between the heartfelt and the comically over-the-top. Most importantly, the movie offers a generous dose of his brassy, stirring belt.

It's only almost a one-man show, because he's joined onstage by his accompanist, occasional back-up singer and heckler Todd Schroeder, who also co-wrote some of the songs with him. He's a talented fellow, even if he's not such a ham.

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Sunny Side Up--When we first see Greg, a nebbishy guy who resembles a young John Oliver, he gets up, showers, and makes himself a couple of eggs, sunny side up. He dresses in a dark suit, and then...the voice of his inner critic starts berating him, telling him all the reasons why he shouldn't leave his apartment--everyone will be staring at him, thinking he's weird, etc.--while at the same time furiously haranguing him to just get over it and go.

Greg manages to get to his job as a funeral director, the voice in his head abusing him all the way. Casual passive-aggressive remarks from coworkers are seen as vicious attacks; even compassion from a kind coworker seems like pity and repulsion to him.

This attempt, by writer-director Mike Melo, to dramatize what a social anxiety disorder feels like in the first person is highly unsettling at first; it's what the voices in most of our heads probably say at times, but psychotically, intolerably intense, and constant. Poor Greg only seems at peace when he's preparing a dead man for a funeral; he and the guy have a mellow imaginary chat. But then a coworker barges in and rattles him.

In light of what we see, it seems pretty heroic that Greg functions as well as he does. As such, this film may serve, as A Beautiful Mind did, to help audience members grasp how useless "Oh just get over it" responses are to people struggling with mental illness.

But there's no way around it; after a while Greg's nasty inner babble grows as tiresome for us as it does for him. Hunter Davis, who plays Greg, holds our sympathy, but the movie's conceit threatens to wear us out. Also, Melo can't find a better rescuer for Greg then the cute whimsical non-judgmental woman downstairs (Samantha Creed) who pushes her way into his life and accepts him as he is. She swerves dangerously close to Nathan Rabin's notorious "manic pixie dream girl" stereotype, although, to his credit, Melo doesn't allow this adorable deus ex machina to give the movie a pat resolution.