Celebrity Mix Movie Review

Well, this is truth in advertising: Celebrity Mix is a compilation of vanity projects featuring headliners like Paul Rudd, David Hyde Pierce, and Zooey Deschanel.

As is always the case with compilation discs, some of the eight vignettes are good/great, and some are barely watchable. The headlining short, "Laud Weiner," makes up for its obvious title with a dead-on portrayal by Pierce of an egomaniac power broker. Just four minutes long, don't expect a lot of nuance, but it's funny to see the normally mild-mannered Pierce yell at interns.

Also quite good is "Dysenchanted," a one-joke bit about a group therapy session inhabited solely by women from fairy tales (though how The Wizard of Oz's Dorothy got there I'll never really know).

Rudd and Deschanel star in the lackluster "House Hunting," an over-long (18 minutes) story about real estate, with Rudd rifling through everyone's stuff as they visit open houses. Also fulfilling the too-easy category is "Dependable People," in which director/writer/star Laura Kightlinger apes Office Space with a too-obvious story of cubicle politics coupled with a bondage fetish.

At the bottom of the ladder are "Media Whore," a mockumentary about an inept MTV-esque VJ (Ali McLean) which is supposed to be embarassingly awkward but is really just embarassingly unfunny. The final short, "Mr. Dramatic," plays us a blind date in slow motion: The guy thinks he's in a perpetual spy movie. Har har.

The other shorts -- both sort-of thrillers -- are fairly good, and there you have it. Ultimately none of the material is compelling enough to buy the DVD, but if you're an uber-fan of any of the celebrities noted in the cast list, there might be enough here for a rental.

Might be.