General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Baxter

The Baxter is a 2005 American romantic comedy written, directed by, and starring Michael Showalter in his feature film debut as a director. The film takes the point of view usually discarded by the genre: its protagonist, Elliot Sherman, is the dull, well-meaning man the heroine settles for before the true romantic lead arrives, the character the film calls a "baxter".¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	New York opening August 26, 2005; Los Angeles opening September 2, 2005; distributed by IFC Films¹
Format	Romantic comedy, 91 minutes, rated PG-13, in color with sound¹
Triple duty	Written, directed by, and starring Michael Showalter as Elliot Sherman, his first feature as director¹^•²
Principal cast	Elizabeth Banks (Caroline Swann), Michelle Williams (Cecil Mills), Justin Theroux (Bradley Lake), Peter Dinklage (Benson Hedges), Paul Rudd (Dan Abbott)³
Production	IFC Films and Plum Pictures; producers Galt Niederhoffer, Celine Rattray, and Daniela Taplin Lundberg; cinematographer Tim Orr¹
Reception	32% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 75 reviews, 75% audience score; Metacritic score of 51⁴^•⁵
Festival	World premiere at the 2005 Tribeca Festival⁶

Spoilers

Premise and the "baxter" term

The film defines its title early: a "baxter" is the guy in a movie who never gets the girl, the steady, dull man a beautiful heroine is prepared to settle for until the more exciting hero shows up. Elliot Sherman, a mild-mannered tax accountant, learns the term from his grandmother, and the label describes his own romantic history: he has repeatedly lost girlfriends to returning ex-boyfriends.³^•⁷

The story opens at the end, with Elliot standing at the altar on his wedding day as the man his bride truly loves bursts into the church and sweeps her away. The film then flashes back roughly a year and a half to show how he got there. Elliot, a repressed Brooklyn accountant, improbably becomes engaged to Caroline Swann (Elizabeth Banks), a glamorous magazine editor. Shortly before the wedding, Caroline's high-school sweetheart Bradley Lake (Justin Theroux) reappears, and Elliot's insecurity takes over. Meanwhile Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams), an office temp and aspiring singer newly arrived from Minnesota, befriends Elliot and, though he is too oblivious to notice, is the better match for him; the two bond over reading the dictionary.³^•⁸^•⁹

The supporting cast includes Peter Dinklage as Benson Hedges, a high-maintenance wedding planner given to lines like "I'm not a marriage counselor, I'm a marriage maker"; Paul Rudd as Dan Abbott, Cecil's unsupportive boyfriend; and Zak Orth, Michael Ian Black, and Catherine Lloyd Burns in supporting roles.¹⁰^•³

Classic-comedy influences

Showalter set out to make a comedy in the vein of classic Hollywood screwball romances. Reviewers identified the film's model as Billy Wilder's The Apartment, whose Jack Lemmon character was named CC Baxter, and the Los Angeles Times placed the film in the tradition of the "Ralph Bellamy character", the reliable second man of 1930s and 1940s romantic comedies exemplified by Bellamy's roles opposite Cary Grant in films such as The Awful Truth and His Girl Friday.¹¹^•¹⁰ The opening wedding scene spoofs the climax of The Graduate, with Elliot standing in for the groom left at the altar, and Showalter cited Bill Pullman's Walter from Sleepless in Seattle in the press notes as a textbook baxter.¹²

The Tribeca Festival program described the result as Showalter pulling off the screwball recipe with the aid of a group of talented comedy players, casting Elliot as the classic "guy left at the altar" in the Ralph Bellamy mold.⁶

Cast connections

Many members of Showalter's comedy circle returned for the film. David Wain, Michael Ian Black, Elizabeth Banks, and Paul Rudd, all associated with the 2001 cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer, which Showalter co-wrote and starred in, appear in The Baxter, as do members of his MTV sketch show troupe The State. Showalter had also been known for the Comedy Central trio Stella with Black and Wain.⁹^•¹³ Wain plays Elliot's brother-in-law Louis, a character Showalter described in an interview as the movie's hidden funny name.²

Reception

Critical response was mixed to negative. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus calls the film good-natured but short on laughs, and the Tomatometer stood at 32% from 75 reviews against a 75% audience score; Metacritic recorded a score of 51.⁴^•⁵ Roger Ebert, rating the film two stars, argued that the problem sat at the center of the movie: Showalter makes too convincing a baxter, a character who deserves to be dumped.³ The Los Angeles Times called it a tender love story and a dead-on lampoon of the genre but found Showalter egregiously miscast in the title role, lacking the easy confidence of the Ralph Bellamy archetype he was invoking.¹⁰ Time Out judged the film self-consciously wispy but noted that, like its protagonist, it squeaks by on nice-guy charm.¹⁴ The Harvard Crimson took the opposite view, crediting the acting and calling the film's charm and quirkiness the reason it succeeds.⁹

Reviewers repeatedly singled out Michelle Williams. The Boston Globe review preserved on Rotten Tomatoes states that only when Williams is on screen does the movie seem human, true, and funny, and Screen Daily wrote that the film comes alive whenever she appears as the sexy, shy aspiring singer.⁴^•¹¹ Richard Brody, reviewing a 2015 New York revival in The New Yorker, called Williams sublime in a dewy-eyed channeling of the young Shirley MacLaine, while judging the film itself genial but neutered, knowingly modeled on Hollywood romances such as The Apartment and borrowing their constraints, with no sex, politics, worldly context, or ethnic diversity.¹⁵

Before release, the trade press was cautious about its commercial prospects: Screen Daily's May 2005 review predicted soft theatrical receipts in the United States and overseas, with ancillary markets likely to return more, and suggested non-theatrical income could rise if co-star Michelle Williams became a breakout star with the December release of Brokeback Mountain.¹¹

Home media and availability

The film was released on DVD on December 13, 2005.¹⁶ In the United States it has been available to stream on Philo and to rent or buy on the Apple TV Store, with rental prices starting at $3.99 and purchase at $4.99.¹⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2005 to 2006

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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