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Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

This is a tale of a jobless deceitful Tommy Basilio who never took anything seriously in his life, including himself. Therefore he lost his love and present, lost having a dream or a tomorrow. At one moment he says "Everybody is lost. But nobody says that about himself !" That guy lives above a bar, (and in it !). After 8 years of affair, his girl goes to his boss; who deserves her more, since he achieves himself, and planed his tomorrow. Now we follow the features of that 40 year old teen's aberration; a caprice with a teen girl that equals his adolescence, being too cowered to admit that he's a loser, his torn connections with everybody, his incapacity to have any kind of balanced human relationship.. So that's why he begged a touch of hand from the girl who danced with him (who drunkenly slept before requesting any physical love from her side).The movie managed to embody the statues of some people from that loser town as well; the dancing woman is unhappily married, the company's owner – who goes constantly to the bar – is irresponsible towards his wife and kids,.. etc. As you see, everybody is a drunken adolescent who has no hope for getting out of their stalemate or that town, along with those rotten invariable values; such as negativism, laziness and separation, that they imprisoned themselves in.The funniest thing is the lead's transforming at the end to a twin for the old drunken man who used to sit in the bar for all the time like a corpse. It insinuated that he'll meet the same fate; turning into a lonely aged, no talker no listener, frozen sot who "Will wake up someday, not breathing !" There are some clever scenes. 2 of them are unforgettable. The first is when the lead's ex-lover was re-watching his old home video. Look how the movie's camera goes beyond the TV's screen, to live the good memories. Maybe because the frivolous past of a character like Tommy is his present and future. Or maybe because these memories have some hot feelings that still alive inside that tape, and that lover who deplores Tommy as lost or determined on being lost.The second scene is when the lead sees his ex-love after giving birth to a baby. He understood there that he can't push the time back to win what he resolved to lose. And that the baby isn't his son; whether due to how he can't give life, even for himself !, or due to the fact that that baby would never have a life under his dead tree. This is surely the best climax for this movie. So when you read the tagline : "a story about one man's search... for who knows what.", you'll easily understand that his search is for an escape, away from his irresponsible self, or admitting it.I knew (Steve Buscemi) first as an extra in (Pulp Fiction), then as an always scary psychopath killer in movies like (Con Air) and (Some Things to Do in Denver When You Are Dead). To an extent that in 1999, when Empire magazine published a reportage about the best 100 movies in history, the icon that they used to define the degree of bloodiness in every movie was a face so similar to his! So imagine my surprise to witness how he can act, write, and direct something distinct, serene, and not bloody such as this.I just hated the poster's line "Black Comedy". Clearly the term "Drama" is unprofitable or unpopular in America of the last decades ! There was no need for such a lie or for hiring big name like (Samuel L. Jackson) to do a useless cameo either. But these were some ways to market the movie in a market that mostly doesn't welcome anything except the holy : action and comedy flicks ! As a direction it's astonishingly simple and sensitively done. (Buscemi) did it without one second of allegation or exhausting technique. And as a script; it's subtle, bitter and enjoyable study for the anti-hero. In other words, sometimes a short novel bewitches me. Here's one of them.

As a week-in-the-life-of a 31-year-old man named Tommy (Steve Buscemi), an out-of-work auto mechanic, this film plods along drearily and monotonously. Tommy's life is a mess. He hangs out at a local Long Island bar, called the Trees Lounge, where he hobnobs with other neighborhood deadbeats.None of the characters here have anything going for them. They drink alcohol, smoke, and talk. They're frustrated, unhappy, angry, and in a lot of emotional pain. Some viewers would call them losers. They don't know how to adapt to life's changes. They can't see beyond the dreary little world they've boxed themselves into. Their perspective is too confining.The best scenes take place inside the bar, where depressing jukebox songs play in the background. Outside the bar, scenes are largely uninteresting and perfunctory. But they do add depth to the characters, if the viewer has any interest in them to begin with. Some scenes play like a soap opera of life's defeated. Pace is slow. Dialogue is voluminous.Superficially, Buscemi, bug-eyed and anemic looking, is something of a trial to watch. Yet, he's no less attractive than other actors here. And that's a welcome change from blow-dried, photogenic fashion models, right out of central casting, who populate so many mainstream films.Low-budget, and very low-concept, "Trees Lounge" is just the ticket for the viewer who is depressed, bored, or feeling blue. One can empathize with Tommy, or his cohorts, knowing that the story is semi-autobiographical of Buscemi, before he got into acting.

This is real life stuff at its best. Two hours flew by while I was watching this movie because I felt like I was there at Trees Lounge. It was like I had my own barstool just watching what was going on.The character development is superb. Even though nothing much happens in the movie that is really profound, you feel like you are rewarded by watching because you get to know the characters, especially Tommy, played by Buschemi. You can almost feel that he is not really acting in this role...it feels more like he is re-living part of his life experience in the movie.It is a slice of life from the outskirts of NYC or Nothern NJ that seems like it would actually happen.

From the quirkiest of the quirky, Steve Buscemi premieres his first film with a nuclear blast. The cast, which most have gone on to really big films, all artfully create the character study which is what Tree's Lounge really happens to be. Each cast member should be awarded an Oscar for how real they portray this sad set of characters. Like a step into the daily wrongness of a typical craphole which can be anywhere in the USA, Buscemi's breakout performance as the alcoholic ice cream man captures a rawness of how a man can be degraded so swiftly in the morays and questionable social structures that permeate our culture. Brilliantly written, Buscemi makes the assumption of just how relationships are all based in fear and the fact of this fear is why the characters act out and react as they do throughout this film but as we all do in the real world as well. When looking for a slice of life that reminds us just how not to be, Tree's Lounge is the perfect example. This film is a triumph.