Big Nothing

Charlie Wood is an unemployed teacher fed up with living off his police-officer wife, Penelope, in a small Oregon town. After a first day at a call centre ends in dismissal, he meets Gus, a fellow misfit with a plan: squeeze money out of a local clergyman by threatening to expose his illegal online habits. Josie McBroom, Gus's former girlfriend, joins them to handle the negotiations by phone, and Charlie keeps the scheme hidden from his wife. The extortion quickly stops going the way the three of them intended, and the mess grows far beyond a simple payoff.

The film is a crime comedy directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, who wrote it with William Rosenfeld. It followed Andrea's earlier Dead End, released in 2003, and was his second feature behind the camera. David Schwimmer plays Charlie, with Simon Pegg as Gus, Alice Eve as Josie, Natascha McElhone as Penelope, Jon Polito as Agent Hymes and Mimi Rogers as Mrs. Smalls. It was produced by Gabriella Stollenwerck and András Hámori for Pathé and Ingenious Film Partners, among others, on a budget of about 3 million dollars.

On IMDb the film holds 6.7 out of 10 from roughly 33,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.4 out of 10 from just under 500 votes, suggesting a modest but fairly consistent audience response. A critics' rating of 5.6 out of 10 from 13 reviews places it below those audience scores.