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Bart Got a Room

• Written and directed by Brian Hecker
• Starring Steven Kaplan, William H. Macy, Cheryl Hines and Alia Shawkat
• Classification: PG

Here's something you don't see every day: a high-school comedy for old poops.

Forget its saucy title, prom storyline and Florida setting: Bart Got a Room is more of a baggy-golf-shorts flick than a string-bikini kind of movie. The film even comes with oddball period flourishes. Lead character Danny Stein (Steven Kaplan) wears a two-storey Frankie Avalon pompadour, rides a bike with kick breaks and plays trumpet in his high-school swing band.

Then there's Danny's single dad, Ernie (William H. Macy), who sports an elaborate, seventies-era Jewfro and trolls for women in Internet chat rooms.

With all its loopy time travel, Bart Got a Room nicely captures the state of cultural disarray that is Florida – a land where Girls Gone Wild collide with Grandparents Gone Deaf and try not to kill one another.

The film has the skimpiest of plots: Danny can't find a date for the prom. Still, simple is often best when it comes to comedy, and if nothing else, Bart Got a Room benefits from knowing performances. Kaplan wanders the film in a true-to-teenage-life daze. Macy, meanwhile, serves as a frightening warning of what Danny might become: a man made ridiculous by romantic failure; a 50-year-old still looking for a girl to take to the prom.

Unlike most of today's comic filmmakers, rookie writer-director Brian Hecker is more interested in chuckles than belly laughs. One typical, deliberately underplayed scene has Danny working the phones minutes before the prom, still looking for a date, while his bored limo driver sits on the couch beside him, eating from a box of Raisin Bran.

Hecker's mocking wit also shows up in the film's settings. Bart Got a Room comes with a flamingo motif: There are fake birds on lawns and real ones on beaches. Hecker's message appears to be that, in Florida, it's always a challenge to distinguish between plastic and real thing. Or maybe he's empathizing with his baffled characters by punctuating scenes with birds shaped like question marks.

For all its sly intelligence, Bart Got a Room lacks vitality. Or maybe passion is a better word. Danny actually has access to a ready date. His best friend growing up, Camille (Alia Shawkat), is receptive, but Danny thinks of her as a sister. Too bad. Shawkat, who played young Maeby Funke on the late, great Arrested Development TV series, is a young actress with real savvy and spark. She could have sent the plastic flamingos flying out of Danny's life for good and turned Bart Got a Room into something really special.

As it is, the film succeeds as a likable, oddly flawed curio – a teen comedy with a hormone deficiency.

Special to The Globe and Mail