Gentlemen Broncos (12A)

From Jared Hess, creator of quirky deadpan comedy Napoleon Dynamite, comes another tale of a poignant solitary and his nutty ambition.

Michael Angarano plays Benjamin, an unassuming lad who's an obsessive writer of sci-fi novels. At a writers' camp he meets his idol, celebrated fantasy author Dr Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), who repays the boy's hero-worship by stealing his manuscript, "Yeast Lords", and claiming it as his own. The film might have worked better if Hess had focused upon this plagiarism, and allowed Clement (from Flight of the Conchords) off his leash: Chevalier's phoniness is the funniest thing here. Instead it indulges long excerpts from the terrible film adaptation of Benjamin's equally terrible novel.