Tim Heidecker plays a hipster who finds it easy to be cynical, in "The Comedy." Courtesy Sundance Institute

“The Comedy”

U.S. Dramatic

** (two stars)

You either groove to the desert-dry humor of director Rick Alverson's film – a scathingly ironic study of the overprivileged white hipster class that populates Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood – or you don't. I didn't, as watching one disaffected rich guy (Tim Heidecker, of “Tim & Eric” fame) meander through his life, cracking tasteless jokes about Hitler and playing impromptu pranks on anyone he encounters, was like getting the self-absorbed misanthropy of “Seinfeld” minus the jokes. Heidecker's performance is oddly heroic, as he holds nothing back in depicting his character as an unrecalcitrant jerk.

-- Sean P. Means

“The Comedy” screens again:

• Monday, Jan. 23, 11:30 a.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City
• Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2:30 p.m., Sundance Screening Room, Sundance resort
• Thursday, Jan. 26, 3 p.m., Eccles Theatre
• Friday, Jan. 27, 6 p.m., Salt Lake City Library, Salt Lake City
• Saturday, Jan. 28, 8:30 a.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City