Pussyfoot ( ** 1/2 )

90 Minutes

Official Selection, Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival

A mustached foreigner looking for love in New York City sounds like it could be the plot to Borat. Pussyfoot, the new comedy from first time writer/director Dusan Sekulovic, has already drawn comparisons to the 2006 comedy. This feature, however, began shooting in late 2005, a full year before Borat put Kazhakstan on the map.

In Pussyfoot, resident alien Irwin (Dusan Sekulovic, also starring in the film) is looking for girls. Not women. Girls. Preferably Jewish ones with one leg. We find him at the beginning of the film pining over having business cards with an important sounding title in order to attract these girls, with something like Executive Production Manager (Irwin is actually a window cleaner for Transparency Inc.). He ends up with a box of misprinted cards (instead reading Produce Manager), and it's back to square zero in finding someone to love him for him in this "second coming-of-age" story.

The film is at its best when Irwin is on screen. His heavy-accented delivery alone is hilarious, but the idiosyncrasies he plays up and his quotable one-liners make him a delight of a main character. Pussyfoot loses its footing a bit when it focuses on his oddball friends and their disconnected subplots, especially one about Irwin's brother, self-help book writer Dr. Tomas Pelkavski (Michael de Nola).But where Pussyfoot needs the most help is in the editing room. Some of the cuts felt slightly amateurish and some beats felt off, leaving some scenes with a feeling of awkwardness in their progression.

The title card reads that the film stars "a bunch of nobodies" but there are some stand-out performances. Nikoleta Sekulovic is straight out of a BBC sitcom as tissue-hoarding emotional wreck Anny, an over-the-top performance which works for this quirky comedy. Lael Logan as Tina manages to evoke Rachel McAdams in both looks and charm. With solid comedic material at its core and a satisfyingly sweet ending, Pussyfoot and its main character Irwin do end up scoring... lots of laughs.