Video Review: 'The Pallbearer' (1996)

Our latter-day Graduates too often come across as blithe dorks. In The Pallbearer, Friends' resident geek, Schwimmer, on the other hand, seems eerily comfortable with the archetype's nasal pathos: Jobless and adrift at 25, he serves as pallbearer for a classmate he never knew and manages to sleep with the deceased's sexy mom (Barbara Hershey) and his own high school crush (Paltrow). Yet, despite some fine banter, Schwimmer's sitcomlike character rarely rises above small-screen shtick. His inability to deal with the real world is only ungainly, not existential. B-