Recommended holiday movie: Zero Charisma (2013)

If you’re lining up videos to watch during the upcoming holiday downtime and you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons or similar fantasy role-playing games, you might want to get your paws on Zero Charisma. If you’ve ever had to contend with a misanthropic overbearing gamemaster who’s never quite grown up out of that oh-so-painful adolescent fanboy phase and has no life beyond the GM screen, you’ll find Scott, the protagonist, oh-so-familiar. In the film, Scott’s world comes crashing down when all sort of unwelcome changes come into his life, from the return of his estranged mom, to the entry of a new, much hipper nerd into the gaming group, to a visit by a Gary Gygax-esque game designer.

Zero Charisma won an audience award at SXSW 2013, JoBlo.com calls it “like TAXI DRIVER for fanboys”, and Anitra both let out sighs of rueful recognition and guffaws when we watched it last night (she also noted some similarities between me and one of the characters). You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll want to make a saving throw.