Sundance Film Review: ‘Paddleton’

A movie about cancer has no right to be as consistently amusing as “Paddleton” — a triumph for which credit should be spread around, even if it most deservedly goes to Ray Romano.

As a bachelor whose best friend is facing his final days, Romano infuses this otherwise downcast material with regular doses of humor, all of it expertly designed to reflect the roiling emotional roller-coaster upon which he’s been thrust.

Locating both pathos and comedy in a raft of small grace notes, the film seems primed to find a sizable streaming audience when, after its Sundance Film Festival premiere, it arrives exclusively on Netflix in late February.Reuniting director Alex Lehmann with his “Blue Jay” collaborator Mark Duplass, “Paddleton” is almost exclusively a two-hander about Michael (Duplass) and his neighbor Andy (Romano), who lives above him in a dingy apartment complex.

Michael’s fatal diagnosis is revealed immediately, and

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