How to Live with a Vegan Without Killing Them

This good-natured indie film has a lot in common with "slacker" comedies like "Clerks" – it's filmed in a suburban location (Milwaukee) with a lead who's balancing a love life, his career, and surrounded by a group of wise-cracking friends, who give advice - solicited and otherwise.

"Live With a Vegan" may be typical of a lot of first-time filmmakers who make films like this – you suspect this is what they know; drinking beer, bitching about girlfriends, getting coffee, etc. "Vegan" is par for the course in that respect, but for two elements; it gets a lot of mileage out of jokes at the expense of the "psycho-bitch" girlfriend, Stacy, a vegan who moves in with Scott (Ty Lennox Bush) and makes his life a living hell. It's not entirely politically correct, but some of the stuff is pretty funny (especially when they have a cook-out). As well as painfully true of many relationships.

And of course, there's the other girl who's right for him...but they just don't know it. Yet.

Scott's male friends are very funny, and whenever they're on, they practically steal the film with great repartee. The writing is very funny, and "truer" than Hollywood rom-com dialogue. Troy Anderson, especially, as Erik, Scott's wise-ass best friend, deliverers all his lines with a great acidic twist, cutting through all manner of b.s., and manages to be endearing as well as occasionally insightful.

The film aims to please, and does everything a good romantic comedy should. Stacy the Vegan girlfriend-from-hell is written a little too over-the-top, and the production values are low. But it's the writing and acting that make this work, right from the beginning. A solid and funny tale of looking for love among the slacker set.