Noah Baumbauch, the writer-director of the new Margot at the Wedding, first made a splash in 1995 with his Gen-X comedy Kicking and Screaming. Ten years later, that film and Baumbach's name had slipped so far into neglect that a major studio thought nothing of recycling its title for one of Will Ferrell's more negligible vehicles. That same year, Baumbach enjoyed a comeback with The Squid and the Whale, and since then Kicking and Screaming has enjoyed the honor of being issued on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection. Meanwhile, his sophomore effort, the 1997 Mr. Jealousy (available for home viewing in a no-frills DVD) remains largely unknown. Which is a shame; it's a near-perfect modern screwball comedy that uses Baumbach's favorite subject — the way that intelligent, literate people screw up their relationships — as the basis for some smart satire.
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