Chabert Watch: Sherman's Way (2008)

Watched:  12/28/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Craig M. Saavedra

This is my final Chabert film of ChabertQuest 2025.  Please clap.  

Well, first, this movie has a surprising lack of Chabert in it whatsoever.  She's in the opening scenes as our lead's girlfriend who predictably dumps him, which is the catalyst for the rest of the film.  I think she's gone 10 minutes in.

So, that's that.

The rest of Sherman's Way (2008) is a series of boilerplate sitcom scenarios in a movie about an uptight, rich asshole named Sherman (Michael Shulman) and a free spirit guy (James Le Gros), Palmer.  He's that charming slacker type with supposed wisdom who works on TV or in a movie but is super hard to deal with in real life.  Neither character is particularly well defined, funny or likable, which may be more a function of an under-written script (and that *seems* to be the case), or lightweight direction, or the movie got mangled in the edit suite.  

I just don't think they worked particularly hard to make the characters more than that really two-dimensional thing we see in literal 30 minute sitcoms where the characters are just that way, and they rarely grow or change.  You just know these two will share small bits of wisdom with each other and learn and grow, and they sure think they're doing that.

The talent in the movie is a range of folks from Donna Murphy as the mother of the titular Sherman, Enrico Colantoni as the enabler for Palmer. M. Emmett Walsh was supposed to be in this for some reason, but only appears in a deleted scene.

This is a movie that sells itself as a road movie - but it isn't a road movie.  They just kick around in what I think is a small town in or around wine country in California (there are scenes filmed in New York).  

Heck, the poster art isn't even of the lead actor - I don't know who that guy is, and this never happens in the movie - but it's suggesting a character who is on the road and lost.  Which isn't even really thematically true.  

that is not the same guy

There's, of course, a hippy-ish manic pixie dream girl, and she takes up a lot of space in the movie, and actor Brooke Nevis is fine.  It's just... a reconstituted character made from spare parts from other movies.

This movie, weirdly, just doesn't have an end.  I mean, obviously music swells and credits roll, but nothing gets resolved and we have no idea what arcs actually got wrapped up.  If the idea was that we'd get a Sherman's Way II:  New Directions! or some shit, I have no idea.  But the idea, I guess, is that you gotta keep on movin'...  but it's confusing at best what Sherman is doing, will do, etc... and how it will impact him.  Which seems important to tell people.  Like a sitcom, our characters will just keep doing this forever.

I didn't hate this movie.  It just passed by like movie fluff.  A movie that feels like something you've seen somewhere else before, but also feels like a small movie of no particular vision.