Intrigue

An ex-office worker becomes a ventriloquist, leading to a date with his unemployment counselor; but his quirky family and a gauche female friend may thwart his new career and love life.

Steven, nearly 30 and living with his parents, sees an old Edgar Bergen movie on TV and decides to fulfill his longtime dream of becoming a ventriloquist. His beautiful unemployment counselor Lorena finds him work, but puts out a restraining order on him when he paints a thank-you note on her door. Later, this young mother agrees to date him anyway, but finds his bickering family, and his inexperience with women, daunting to a relationship. Steven's sister Heidi is a wedding planner with a drunken ex-fiancé who keeps showing up at the door. His friend Fangora is a pseudo-punk rocker whose sex does not prevent her from giving him terrible advice about women. The wedding of a Jewish girl, who wants Klezmer music and gets something unexpected, will become a turning point in everyone's lives.—J. Spurlin

The Schoichets are a somewhat dysfunctional but still loving (or so what somewhat clueless parents Lou and Fern believe) family, with adult offsprings Steven and Heidi still living at home. Failing to become a singer, Heidi is trying to eke out a new career as a wedding planner in the aftermath of a breakup with her ex-fiancé Michael, an accountant on who she has a restraining order. Shy Steven, whose only real friend is brash Fangora - Fanny - an aspiring musician in her own right who has a misguided sense of judgment, has just been fired from his office job at an electronics firm. Instead, he wants to work as what is his newfound passion: a ventriloquist. In this process of a career change, Steven meets Lorena, his employment counselor, to who he is immediately attracted. Somewhat endeared to him and his ventriloquism through which he is able to open up more easily than he did without a dummy on his lap, Lorena is nonetheless wary of Steven stemming from his first attempt at a personal relationship with her based on the poor advice provided to him by Fanny, due to her history of bad choices in men, and she, as a single mother, needing to take into consideration her young daughter, Bonnie. The issues with Steven and Heidi and those in their lives come to a head at a wedding they all somewhat by coincidence attend.—Huggo

Steven Schoichet is browbeaten at every turn, by his family, his dead-end job, the faceless suburb where he still lives at home. That is until he decides to make a change: Ventriloquism--hey, a dream's a dream. His family barely pays him enough attention to even dismiss the idea--his mother is only concerned that he eat something, and his father only thinks of his model ships. Steven's sister recently broke off her engagement to an unstable accountant, which makes her career as a wedding planner an emotional minefield. His only supporter is neighbor Fangora--aka Fanny--a suburban punker who has her own aspirations to stardom. After Steven loses his job, things actually start to turn around. He falls for his counselor at the unemployment office, and through the best efforts of Steven and the little friend on his knee, good things start to happen for everyone around him. A restraining order leads to new love, a rock band learns Yiddish, and everything clicks into place at somebody else's wedding.—Sujit R. Varma