Gossip Sauce Sundance Report: Peter and Vandy

When we read the description of Peter and Vandy we thought, "Awwww, poor them. Their thunder is so totally being stolen by 500 Days of Summer."

The film, written and directed by Jay DiPietro and based on his play, is set in New York and, like 500 Days, follows a couple, Jason Ritter and Jess Weixler, non-linearly through their meeting, courtship, eventual dissolution and to the other side of the aftermath. It even has the same line about being a story about love as opposed to a love story.

But to compare Peter and Vandy to 500 Days of Summer is to compare a kid in floaties dogpaddling in an above-ground pool to Michael Phelps in Beijing. One is flailing around, getting wet and the other is making magic happen while wet.

The truth is, this film will very doubtfully ever see the light of day. But that's no tragedy.

Despite Ritter's adorableness, Peter and Vandy is obviously DiPietro's sophmoric journal entry, a bittersweet love letter to an ex. You know, like the ones you wrote in high school but realized you could never send.

Peter and Vandy has the sad distinction of being the one film at Sundance we walked out of (even though we should have done the same at Big Fan and certainly The Informers). Maybe it was because we'd hit our limit on subpar fare, having already seen The Informers and The Winning Season earlier in the day, or maybe the bar had been raised so high by 500 Days that we instantly recognized a waste of time when we saw it, or maybe we just wanted to be one of the cool kids. Peter and Vandy sparked a mass audience exodus, the worst we've seen during the festival which is sad since it's not THE suckiest film here.

But it is one of them.