Tag: indie comedy

The Bellmen (2020)

The indie comedy The Bellmen stands in the tradition of ensemble comedies like Super Troopers and Waiting, chronicling the odd lives and codes of honor of working class workers. Set in an Arizona resort hotel near Tucson, the film opens with the initiation of Josh (Josh Zuckerman) as a bellman by the seasoned bell captain Steve (Adam Ray) and his team of bellmen. As a BIT (Bellman in Training), Josh has to cover a lot of ground, bearing up under hazing by his fellow workers and learning the complex code of the bellmen. Meanwhile, Steve tries to win the heart of Kelly (Kelen Coleman), a manager at the hotel, despite having been stuck as a bellman for the past twenty-seven years. Into this comes Gunther (Thomas Lennon), a New Age guru obsessed with hand hygiene, who soon bewitches workers and hotel guests alike.

The Bellmen is a bro-comedy that proves to be gentler than it initially appears. While there’s the usual ribbing of the new guy and one or two silly sex jokes, it never gets mean-spirited, nor does it rely on the sexism, gross-out humor, and bro-code that many comedies of its type use as substitutes for actual laughs. The jokes don’t exactly fly fast and furious – the comedy is mostly situational and rarely laugh out loud, yet there’s something kindly charming about the whole enterprise, evading easy laughs in favor of absurd situations, vignettes, and non-sequiturs.

While this is still a bro-comedy, the women do get a few chances to be funny, especially Susan (Anjali Bhimani), who walks into a management meeting already two steps ahead of everyone and ends it by flinging papers in the air and running out. But the women are mostly there for support and sexiness, with Gunther’s female companions used as props rather than fully fledged characters. This isn’t surprising, but one wishes that they’d been given a bit more to do.

While the majority of the cast are still more or less in their career infancy, three recognizable (and welcome) faces are Thomas Lennon, as the confusingly accented guru Gunther, Richard Kind as the hotel’s owner, and Willie Garson as Alan, the increasingly put-upon manager who keeps giving recalcitrant workers demerits in a system he’s made up. Lennon in particular helps to guide the plot and provides some of the film’s most entertaining set pieces as he spouts New Age platitudes and confusing metaphors that wander off into infinity. Lennon’s presence is referential here – after all, he made his name in this kind of comedy with Reno 911! – but he luckily doesn’t dominate the proceedings.

But the main cast, beyond the recognizable faces, do most of the heavy lifting, and a lot of the film’s charm is down to Adam Ray, who could have played Steve as an overconfident idiot. Instead, Steve constantly tries to hide his sense of inadequacy, his genuine romanticism, and his love of his job. Steve aspires to a management position not because he really wants one but because he think it will make him more attractive to Kelly. But his true love is being a bellman, and there’s a sweet silliness to the seriousness with which all the characters take their jobs that elevates the film even more.

The Bellmen aspires to cult heights in the same vein as Super Troopers, but it may not go down as a cult film simply because it’s far too nice. And that, to be honest, is what’s most enjoyable about it. Rather than relying on the jokes that have dated more than a few films like it, The Bellmen gives more space to absurdist humor (including a mysterious cactus) and even character development. Is it silly? Oh, very. But silliness is underrated, and The Bellmen proves that you can construct a film like this without relying on offensive comedy.

The Bellmen comes to iTunes, Amazon, Google, and Vudu in May.

For Now (2019)

For Now (2019)

For Now can certainly claim to be a true indie. It was funded by Kickstarter and is near-documentary in both style and substance – the script is largely improvised, though the plot is not, and plays off the real life relationships between the four principles. The result is an occasionally uneven but diverting road-trip film about a group of twenty-somethings traveling up the California coast and navigating their problematic relationships along the way.

For Now occupies an odd position between Duplassian mumblecore and near-documentary, and the overlap between real life and fiction is one of the most intriguing things about it. The film is a seven-day road trip undertaken by Hannah (Hannah Barlow), her boyfriend Kane (Kane Senes), their friend Katherine (Katherine Du Bois), and Hannah’s brother Connor (Connor Barlow), as they travel up the California coast to take Connor to an audition at the San Francisco Ballet Company. There’s tension in the car, as Hannah and Kane deal with a rough patch in their relationship and their careers, complicated by Katherine, who has been staying on their couch, and the conflict-laden relationship between Hannah and Connor, their past, and the deaths of their parents.

There are really two ways that a film like this can go: self-serious pretension, and an interesting exhumation of relationships. For the most part, For Now is in the second category, thanks largely to the warmly ironic leads and the fact that the conversations play out like real conversations, with arguments, tangents, diversions, underlying animosity, and sibling rivalry bubbling to the surface. There’s very little self-aware quirkiness here, and what there is is tempered by naturalistic shifts in dialogue and mis-en-scene. The leads are human—at times annoying and egotistical, at others revealing layers of character and motivation often missing in self-styled indie comedies. The film doesn’t promise solutions for grief, co-dependence, or the occasionally drifting sensibilities of Millennials—the characters are muddling their way through as best they can, attempting to make art and to form connections to their families, friends, and significant others.

For Now plays like early Duplass Brothers (and it’s no wonder, as Barlow and Senes were inspired to make it by a Mark Duplass speech at SXSW), which will endear it to some while repelling others. There’s no doubt that this film sits comfortably in the mumblecore niche, though it doesn’t go as far into the realms of humorous discomfort as some films in the genre. The unmoored nature of the characters, and the desire to find some meaning in a post-post-modern landscape, can come off as cloying, but For Now never edges into the “privileged yet incompetent” territory of some indie filmmaking. The central relationship is really Hannah and Connor as they navigate their sometimes difficult dynamic and the way that each deals with their parents’ loss. The pair have the intimacy of siblings close in age, their own private language and way of relating to each other, which both Katherine and Kane have difficulty understanding or penetrating. But the conflicts, when they come, are just as intense as the moments of joy, and it is to the film’s credit that it neither dwells on nor shies away from the more uncomfortable moments.

There’s a tendency to require small films to revolutionize genres or concepts in order to be deemed worthy of attention, but we should also recognize when a film attempts a project or an experiment and does it well. There’s something surprising that For Now, beyond its cinematic competency, is hardly revolutionary yet is refreshing and enjoyable nonetheless.

For Now is available to stream on VOD, including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and Vudu.

A Boy Called Sailboat (2018)

A Boy Called Sailboat (2018)

Although there are one or two big names attached to indie comedy A Boy Called Sailboat, the true stars are a group of child actors led by Julian Atocani Sanchez, who plays Sailboat, a little boy with a little guitar who just wants to write a song for his Abuela. It’s a special kind of film that can rely on children to drive its story and maintain its charm, but A Boy Called Sailboat pulls it off, evading some of the pitfalls of the quirky indie comedy to deliver something truly wonderful.

Each character in the film is fueled by their own specific obsession and constructs their lives around it. Sailboat lives with his parents in a small house in the middle of the desert, somewhere along the Texas border. His father Jose (Noel Gugliemi) dreams of horses and six-shooters, but has to keep an eye on the Stick, a wooden prop painted the colors of the Mexican flag that stops their house from falling over. Sailboat’s mother Meyo (Elizabeth de Razzo) spends her days making meatballs, rarely leaving the house. His best friend Peeti (Keanu Wilson) teaches himself to play soccer, and classmate Mandy (Zeyah Peterson) wanders the halls of their school plugged into her portable Discman. Sailboat spends his days at school, at home, or traveling to the Oasis, a roadside car lot run by Ernest (J.K. Simmons), who recounts the brilliance of his three vehicles while Sailboat communes with his namesake – an old wooden boat parked on one side of the lot. One day, Sailboat discovers a little guitar in a pile of junk by the roadside, which he takes to carrying around. When he visits his Abuela (Rusalia Benavidez) in the hospital, she makes him promise to write her a song on his guitar, setting into motion a fable that will change the lives of the people who appear in it.

A Boy Called Sailboat is so self-consciously quirky that it would almost be annoying if it weren’t so sincere. It’s visually and thematically reminiscent of the Hesses’ Napoleon Dynamite or Nacho Libre, with its cast of odd characters and bright color palette. But rather than exploiting its characters for laughs, A Boy Called Sailboat begins to reveal the layers of their obsessions and the reasons behind them, told through the eyes of a boy with a strange name and strange family who doesn’t consider himself strange at all. Sailboat is a loving, accepting little boy, and those around him love and accept him in turn. As he writes his song, the world around him transforms, drawing on the power of music to elicit emotional response, even without our fully understanding why. The soundtrack is primarily composed of classic rock and folk songs – “My Bonnie,” “House of the Rising Sun,” and “La Bamba” among them– played without lyrics on guitar, a subtle tribute to the little guitar that so inspires the people who hear it.

Centering the narrative on a Mexican-American family provides an opportunity for some interesting undercurrents given the current national dialogue. The film could easily slip into a story about “magical” Latinx people, but evades that, instead drawing on magical realist traditions in an ambiguously American setting, effectively marrying cultural traditions without exploiting its central characters. There’s a deft sleight of hand going on here, and writer/director Cameron Nugent pulls it off with aplomb, turning A Boy Called Sailboat into a modern fable the moves and amuses without going too far over the edge in quirk. The performers, too, acquit themselves well—including Jake Busey, who plays Sailboat’s hypermasculine teacher, and a fantastic final act appearance from character actor Lew Temple. But the film really centers on Sailboat—yes, his name is explained—and Sanchez carries it all on his shoulders without ever slipping into the maudlin or the overly cutesy.

While A Boy Called Sailboat is not going to remake the world of indie comedy, it really doesn’t need to. It’s a sweet, uplifting film, telling a gentle story about a little boy, his family, his Abuela, and his little guitar. The film doesn’t need anything more or less than that.

A Boy Called Sailboat arrives on VOD, including Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play, on February 5.