Somebody Up There Likes Me is a 2012 independent comedy film directed by Bob Byington. The film follows Max (Keith Poulson), his best friend Sal (Nick Offerman), and Lyla (Jess Weixler), a woman they both adore, as they navigate through the ups and downs of life over a period of 35 years.
The film is structured around several key events in the trio's lives, including weddings, funerals, hospitals, and divorce courts. Through it all, Max, Sal, and Lyla seem to maintain a certain detachment from their own lives, as if watching from the outside. They engage in deadpan conversations, make absurd decisions, and seem to skirt around any true emotional connection with one another.
As time passes, Max and Lyla form a relationship and eventually get married, but their marriage is fraught with tension and misunderstandings. Sal serves as the constant outsider, never fully able to connect with either Max or Lyla.
The film has a surreal, dreamlike quality that is underscored by its use of a narrator (voiced by Sirish Rao) who occasionally breaks the fourth wall to comment on the action. The overall effect is both playful and melancholic, as if the film is gently poking fun at the human tendency to take ourselves too seriously, while also acknowledging the inevitability of aging and death.
Somebody Up There Likes Me premiered at the South by Southwest film festival in 2012 and was generally well-received by critics, who praised its offbeat humor and inventive storytelling.