COMIC DRAMA; 1hr 40min
STARRING: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara
Personal business: from left, Robinson and Rudd
Craig Waterman (Robinson) is a nebbishy suit who nobody would want to be. His florist wife, Tammy (Mara), can barely raise a flicker of interest in him — when she’s not schmoozing with their otherwise disdainful, 16-year-old son (Jack Dylan Grazer as Steven), or palling around with her infinitely more interesting ex-boyfriend, that is. Craig’s job, which involves turning unwitting users onto addictive apps, is a paradox of morally dodgy and numbingly dull. Topping off that downer, he’s socially tone-deaf to an excruciating degree that Saturday Night Live alum Robinson delivers with cringe-inducing immediacy.
Craig’s textbook-attractive new neighbour, Austin Carmichael (Rudd), on the other hand, is a lesson in pleasing just about any crowd. As a TV weatherman with a wicked sense of adventure who plays lead guitar and sings in his own band and who owns his life with a tossed-off swagger of success, Austin is the antidote Craig didn’t realise he needed. (Why Austin bothers with such a rut-stuck mouseburger becomes apparent as his own story unfolds.)
But when their nascent friendship goes pear-shaped after Craig loses his tenuous grip on fitting in, he promptly proceeds to lose it altogether. Having tasted the liberating rush of a close relationship, Craig is unable to leave Austin alone, at which point writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s feature debut skews from the squirmy-goofy to the concerning and sad. As the axis on which its tilt-a-world spins, a progressively unhinged Craig is a cautionary lesson in the perils of isolation. An irredeemable outsider with no clue of why, Craig is trapped in the prison of himself.
