Davy Mitchell is your stereotypical geeky intellectual. He totes glasses, has an uneven haircut and inept social skills. He’s just released a collection of short stories called ‘Things People Do to Each Other’ and is on a road-trip with his brother to promote the book. Davy’s brother is his polar opposite, he’s cocky and always gets the women who Davy is unable to pull himself. Fate plays Davy a hand and one night he receives a phone call from a sultry woman who, much to his surprise, initiates phone sex. A relationship evolves from these mysterious phone calls and Davy begins to learn about what it is to love and to live.
Being witness to Davy’s skills with the ladies is often cringe-worthy, but that’s half the fascination, watching something you secretly wish to avert your eyes (and ears) from. Easier with Practice is soft and sweet, a tender glance at every aspect of Davy’s tragic life, from his old grey sweater to his tiny apartment where he eats froot loops. It’s easy to laugh at this antihero, however it’s easier to sympathize with his complex emotions and the dilemmas he has to face.
Unflinching long shots bring tension to what Davy admits to being a boring road-trip. Instead of finding freedom, he finds himself suffocated by a love that can never be real. Easier with Practice offers an ambiguous character study with natural casting and dialogue which leads exactly where you expect it, clinging to the cliché that love is blind.
