This movie, a kind of post-modern buddy comedy that leans hard into the toxic parts of male friendship, was written by Michael Covino and Kyle Marvin who also play the two main characters, who are, by the way, named Mike & Kyle. Covino, of course, is also in the director’s chair. The film takes place in short vignettes as we follow the “friendship” between Mike & Kyle over a period of several years, a relationship plagued with ups and downs because of, just boiling it down to its most basic parts, just what awful people they are. Mike is the more toxic of the two, or perhaps it would be better to say that he’s the more actively toxic; Kyle’s toxicity is of the more passive kind, when he lets Mike get away with things no one should let anyone get away with and wants Mike’s approval even as he himself realizes that Mike is not a good person.
This is a movie where your mileage is going to vary on just how much of these characters you can take. They’re obnoxious and frustrating and challenging. But I have to say I really, really went for this movie. It is, for one thing, the funniest movie I’ve seen in a couple of years. I laughed harder and longer at this movie than I have at anything since Toni Erdmann, I’d say. The script is unflinching in the ways it deconstructs these guys and Covino and Marvin give brilliant, warts-and-all performances. Gayle Rankin is particularly excellent as Kyle’s girlfriend, a woman who would just really like the guy she loves to walk away from this insane friendship with Mike. She brings more to the role than the standard girlfriend character and when it comes to really getting awkward and biting and cruel, she can hold her own with Covino & Marvin. This is a film where you’re cringing as hard as you’re laughing and the movie isn’t afraid to just let awkward silences spool out until you want to crawl under your chair. At other times, one or other of the characters just won’t. shut. up. And THAT’s the reason you want to crawl under your chair with empathetic embarrassment. It’s strong medicine. Covino and Marvin could easily have lightened this up and made it more audience friendly by not going quite as dark or quite as pained, but they wrote the movie they wanted to make and audiences are, by and large, not going to love it. But, boy, I did.
The film also has a surprisingly rich visual identity. The vignettes spool out in really, really long uninterrupted takes. The first one follows our dynamic duo on a bike ride in Italy and is a real masterpiece. Later there’s one that tracks everything that’s going on at a Christmas party through the windows of the small house where the party is, the camera circling around the house like an uninvited guest that can’t find a way in; that one had to be a nightmare. I really loved that the film went all in on its visuals because this is the kind of movie where you often come out raving about the script but have to admit that the visuals are very bland and workmanlike. Not here. Here, everything is working to create a weird, unique take on toxic relationships and arrested male development. Some people are sick of those things as movie subjects, I get it, but they’re done here with more wit and intelligence and vibrancy than I’ve seen them done in a really, really long time. Look, as I so often say when I’m raving about some movie or other, this isn’t for everyone. But, dammit, it’s for me and I loved every second of it. 4 stars.
tl;dr – weird buddy-comedy deconstructs toxic male relationships in a sharp, often hilarious, cringe-inducing way; a great script, great performances and surprisingly gorgeous visuals. 4 stars.