5 Star Day

Comments (0) By Nick Pinkerton Wednesday, Nov 2 2011

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5 Star Day
Directed by Danny Buday
Lucid Entertainment
Opens November 2, Quad Cinema

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Promised a wonderful “5 Star Day” by his horoscope, Jake Gibson (Cam Gigandet) instead loses his job, his girlfriend, and his car in the space of 24 hours—on his birthday. This inspires Jake to travel across the country to seek out the three people born at the same hospital that he was, at the same time, and to compare their birthday experiences, all in the interest of somehow disproving astronomy for a presentation in the ethics class he’s taking. None of this, of course, is believably motivated human behavior; worse, none of it, as played out in 5 Star Day, is entertaining. Jake spends interludes in Chicago with a single mom (Jena Malone) and a guilt-ridden nurse (Brooklyn Sudano), then heads to Atlantic City to party with a swinging crooner (Max Hartman), interactions which lead to some predictable revelations about “there but for the grace of God. . . .” and paying it forward to the tune of an up-front soundtrack that’s a septic tank of justly obscure wannabes. Gigandet fills every close-up with flirtatious face wrinkles, embarrassed smiles, and anything else he can think of, to the point where Jake seems downright spastic; although not terribly good at acting, Gigandet seeks to compensate for this fact by doing a lot of it.