Jeff Balsmeyer's "Ingenious" focuses on a pair of inventors about whom I had never heard. Dallas Roberts and Jeremy Renner play the friends who are trying to find the next great innovation, a process that isn't without a few challenges. Their great achievement is something that looks as if it would be pretty neat to own. Sometimes when I see movies that look at these topics, it surprises me that I'd never heard of the subject (in this case the kind of bottle opener that they create). Now that I know about it I just might try to go out and find one of those bottle openers. In the meantime I recommend this movie. It's not a masterpiece but still worth seeing.

Matt (Dallas Roberts) and best buddy Sam (Jeremy Renner) are always inventing things...and are unable to save them. Matt's patient wife Gina (Ayelet Zurer) loves him but is getting fed up with it and is ready to leave him. Matt is depressed but can't let go of his dream.

Purportedly based on a true story but you could have fooled me! This is yet another story about a failed man at the end of his rope who (improbably) comes up with an invention that makes him famous and wealthy. This plot has been done to death and this adds nothing new to the story. I saw it at the Provincetown Film Festival and I'm guessing I was in the minority--the audience applauded long and loud. I was bored out of my mind and knew what was coming every step of the way. It gets a 3 because the actors are attractive and VERY good (especially Roberts and Zurer),it's well-directed and there's some beautiful cinematography here but (all in all) this is boring and predictable.

So, basically you get a re-telling of the American dream for the n-th time, this time in the form of two barely-functional drunken gambling addicts who struggle to become rich by creating the ultimate piece of junk that can pollute the planet AND be sold for $6.99 retail.

In the meantime, the usual happens: they fail a couple of times, they get ripped off (and try to sue),one of them get dumped, his ex wife try to quit a successful, well-paid, loved job to engage in a long career in self-hating by becoming a real state agent alongside her sister -who she clearly cannot stand- (why is she doing this? we never know. why are the filmmakers telling us this? we never know),until they finally struck gold in the form of the most useless trinket ever imagined by men, proving that in America you only need a good idea (and cheap Chinese labor) to become a millionaire.

If you like modern Cinderella-like stories, go ahead and watch this. Otherwise, avoid.