Around is a semi-autobiographical story about a struggling film student forced to live on the mean streets of New York for a year or so.  Written and directed by 25-year-old David Spaltro, Around has a visual flair that belies the fact that it was filmed on the cheap and financed by credit cards.  It’s a good-looking movie, beautifully shot and well-edited.  Spaltro has a bright future ahead of him.

But Spaltro’s storytelling skills need honing.  Our fearless lead is Doyle Simms, a Jersey boy with a considerable amount of self-regard.  I think we’re supposed to find him awesome, but Spaltro has written him as a guy who always has a clever response (or clever-ish, in most cases) for all situations and is great at everything he tries.  That’s less awesome on screen than I suspect it read on the page.  He has little but contempt for everyone he meets, and most of them are written as contemptible.  The New York where he lives is full of grotesque artsy straw-people.  The only other human beings who seem to populate the city are extremely helpful and well-kempt street people (perhaps I lied about the mean streets - these are more like mildly indifferent streets that would probably loan you a cup of sugar in a crisis), a pixie-ish dream girl (who is, thankfully, not so manic) who has an infinite patience for our hero, and few others outside of Simms’ buddy who I think is named Logic, but who might as well be called Joe Exposition.  Actually, exposition is a problem with many of the minor characters.  Everyone in Simms’ life can’t wait to tell him that’s he’s going to go far, or that he feels so much more than the rest of us, or that he’s a dreamer who’s bound to fail.  People say that sort of thing to me every day, too, but I try not to brag about it.

The actor who plays Simms, Rob Evans, does a decent enough job.  Some of the other actors are a little smirky or stiff.  Come to think of it, Evans is a little smirky and stiff at times, too, but I think that’s what the story is calling for.  It doesn’t help that he’s saddled with a black trenchcoat and loads of attitude.  Considering the Kevin Smith persona, maybe that’s a thing for Jersey guys.  I’m not up on the norms.  I think at times that Spaltro is poking fun at himself.  At one point, for instance, the non-manic pixie dream girl (played by the luminous Molly Ryman) falls asleep while Simms explains, ponderously, “ I wanted to... tell stories... about people.  And... film is such a great medium... to show things... in a different way.”  Yeah, dude, you said it.

So, in short, the story needed work, and that’s hard to get around.  That kind of problem is not too unusual in a first-time film, especially a micro-indie like this.  It’s, y’know, hard to build a story up so that an audience can join in with the moment of genuine emotion, and there's a few such moments in this movie that never seem to be earned. Perhaps while working with such deeply personal material, Spaltro could not collaborate with someone.  But his script would have been better off if someone with a more balanced perspective on the story and its characters had worked on it.  It's hard to get outside of your own head, but I hope Spaltro outgrows this reticence.  There's a lot of promise in his talent.