Opening of FULL GROWN MEN July 25, 2008

Award-winning indie comedy from SF-based director David Munro

Filmmakers in person! David Munro & Xandra Castleton at select shows: Fri 7/25 at 7:30 & 9:45; Sat 7/26 & Sun 7/27 at 4:45 & 7:30.

Set in a stylized yet familiar landscape of Americana, Munro’s whimsical cautionary tale follows Alby Cutrera (Matt McGrath), a 35-year-old husband and father who longs for the days of his carefree boyhood when his only occupation was playing with his action figures. Desperate to escape the confines of adulthood and return to his halcyon days, Alby tracks down his childhood whipping boy Elias (Judah Friedlander), who now teaches at a special needs school, and persuades him to take a road trip to Diggityland – their favorite childhood theme park. As the dynamic duo motor along Florida’s tatty Orange Blossom Highway, they encounter a cast of tragicomic creatures, including an AWOL ex-theme park employee turned commando hitchhiker (Alan Cumming), an oversexed bartending clown-in-training (Amy Sedaris), and a trailer-dwelling delusional mermaid (Deborah Harry). Calamity and mayhem ensue as Alby and Elias’ sentimental trip down memory lane becomes an unsolicited lesson in the perils of living in the past.

Co-written and produced by Xandra Castleton, FULL GROWN MEN dispenses with the prototypical Peter Pan story and instead portrays a troubled character whose obsession with the past becomes a crippling pathology. McGrath’s (Broken Hearts Club, Boys Don’t Cry) Alby is a dark, wounded anti-hero incapable of co-existing in an adult world. Friedlander (30 Rock, American Splendor) plays against him as the hapless straight man keen to let bygones be bygones. With its candy-coated cinematography and jingly score, FULL GROWN MEN may set out as a comedy-adventure road movie, but it soon takes a decided departure and becomes an allegorical critique of a generation lost in nostalgia.

Following its World Premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, FULL GROWN MEN won the coveted Sundance Channel Audience Award for the indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems film series. Chosen as Filmmaker Magazine’s “one of 25 new indie faces,” David Munro’s short films Bullethead, First Love Second Planet, and Compulsory Breathing have screened at festivals worldwide, from Sundance to Berlin. Critics have praised his work as “visionary” and “tour de force,” with First Love touted by the SF Weekly as “the single best film of 1996” and Bullethead as “one of the best shorts in the last ten years” by Sundance programming director John Cooper. A Florida native, Munro co-founded the San Francisco-based production company Grotto films with his wife Xandra Castleton. They are currently adapting a graphic novel called "The Inferiors."

The film’s running time is 80 minutes; it is not rated.

“Lyrical and funny, FULL GROWN MEN is a tough-minded film about the need to grow up.”— F.X. Feeney, LA Weekly (Critic’s Pick)

“A wonderful movie. No matter how preposterous, the character’s ring true. That is the mark of a great comedy.”—ABC.com

“Outrageously entertaining. Enchanting and provocative…with an understated poignancy.”— Los Angeles Journal

Official Website: http://www.fullgrownmenthemovie.com/