User reviews

In weakly meandering LA indie dark comedy "Running On Empty" science has developed a way to accurately predict everyone's natural death date. On learning he has less than a year to live meek Keir Gilchrist's life takes a jolt. Fiancee Francesca Eastwood (Clint's daughter) dumps him, but he befriends Lucy Hale. Pimp Rhys Coiro steals his car and repeatedly tries extorting cash out of him. Oh, and his weird job for mortician uncle Jim Gaffigan (good) carries on as normal. Daniel André may have hoped his debut as writer / director would strike a bleakly genius tone similar to that of the likes of "Wristcutters: A Love Story"... but it doesn't. Disappointing.

This movie is kind of confusing in its tone and presentation. It truly seems like the work of amateurs; perhaps a film school project.

The cast seems to consist of first-time actors, led by a completely charmless main character, and I would've dismissed it completely after the first disheartening 10 minutes, if not for the puzzling presence of names like Monica Potter, Lucy Hale, Jim Gaffigan and Rhys Coiro.

Did they owe money or favors to the producers?

The script is a mess, the dialogue clumsy, scenes are long and ambling and poorly edited. The entire pacing of both individual scenes and the movie as a whole seems off. It tries to come off as a sort of quirky unpredictable dark comedy, but it's neither funny nor original, and completely devoid of any charm.

According to IMDb this is the director's feature debut, and honestly: that doesn't surprise me one bit.

The dramedy Running on Empty has had a title change to the more bland Mort in Sherman Oaks.

Ready to be buried might have been a better title.

Mort (Keir Gilchrist) works in the family owned funeral parlour in San Fernando Valley. He has punched above his weight to be engaged to stunning but vacuous Nicole (Francesca Eastwood.)

They decide to get their Life Day Count checked. Which assesses how many days a person will live barring things like accidents. Nicole has 60 years left, but Mort has less than a year. Nicole promptly ditches him.

Trying to make sense of his remaining days. Mort enroles on a dating service for people with short life expectancy. It is a disaster but makes a friend of kookie Kate (Lucy Hale) who makes the video for the dating site.

However Mort is also being pursued by a pimp after a prostitute Mort met in a bar dies.

This could had been an interesting story. If it was completely rewritten. The movie wants to be a quirky independent feature.

Instead it is full of tired old tropes. The pimp angle is jarring. Mort should had gone to the police and told them some guy stole his car. Katie is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, she even has blue highlights.