Earlier submissions from this year’s SXSW highlighted how many of the horror films here seem almost present in their questioning of who we want to be in the 2020s as technology continues to redefine the human condition. The funny thing is that a few comics this year also contain references to how we define ourselves whether it’s because of being popular in high school, online drama, or joining a cult. They all have elements that can feel a little sitcom-y although two of them overcome those basics to find something true and funny, while the third can never get past what its broad sense of humor does to flatten its characters.
The best of the group, albeit a minor one, is the genius of Will Ropp “Brian,” it’s a movie I love more than its amazing name. Written by Mike Scollins, “Brian” is at its best when it digs beneath the aggressive personality of its title character, a high school student who goes from weird to hateful. It’s not unfair to say that it’s a film with echoes of “Napoleon Dynamite,” but it’s willing to question whether these unusual comic characters might have a significant level of mental illness. Brian (Ben Wang) at first appears to be just another strange young man, but there is something dark beneath his bluster and when Ropp takes Brian’s attack seriously, his film defies some of its future tropes. Of course, it helps that Randall Park swoops in and nails several scene-ending lines like a comic killer.
Brian is the movie kid we’ve seen before: bullied at his high school until he meets a new kid named Justin (Joshua Colley), an outgoing guy who helps bring Brian out of his shell. When Brian isn’t suffering from full-blown panic attacks (what he calls “weird things”) at school, he’s looking out for one of his teachers (Natalie Morales) or avoiding insults from his hateful older brother (Sam Song Li). His mother (Edi Patterson) wants to protect Brian, but also gives him space to see who he wants to be, and decides that, in order to get closer to his teacher, he will run for class president against a good boy who has never been opposed before and a female voice that wants to change the school government from within.
Wang understands this character well, rarely giving in to the comedy tropes of the “exploited gangster.” He humanizes Brian in a way that is crucial to the film’s success, allowing us to care about what happens to a kid who can be really kind of crazy. That’s also a good quality of Ropp’s film because they don’t get overly sentimental when introducing Brian or his arc. Refusing to get off easy, “Brian” feels more like a character study than your typical teen comedy. We won’t all be able to see ourselves in Brian’s paradox, but the film’s desire to clarify rather than some universal vision makes it work. Brian doesn’t have an easy life, but neither do most teenagers. Heck, many adults, too.
At its heart, Chelsea Devantez’s “The Basics” and it’s about people finding who they are in the emotional world of social media and their exes. It turns out that high school isn’t the only place where popularity and identity lead to reckless behavior. This time, it’s the story of a woman who is infatuated with her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, thinking that her perfect online persona is a challenge to her happiness. Of course, there’s more to it than meeting Instagram.
Ashley Park is great as Gloria, a woman who wonders why her boyfriend Nick (Taylor John Smith) won’t post pictures of them online. After all, he posted non-stop when he was in love with the beautiful Kaylinn (Leighton Meester), so Gloria always sees pictures of Nick in a happy relationship with someone else. It doesn’t help that Kaylinn reappears in her online life, commenting on one of Nick’s photos. What do you want? Gloria decides to turn her cyberstalking into something real and tracks down Kaylinn, only to find that jealousy goes both ways.
The best of “Basic” illuminates how much of our online lives are fake. We can only see part of the picture when we look at the happy couples in our social feed, and make assumptions about how other people are better than us, forgetting that everyone is shaping their lives online to give the result they desire. Park and Meester are excellent, finding a unique comedic rhythm that allows “The Basics” to rise above its title. The first half can feel thin, and the whole thing relies heavily on voiceovers, but that’s countered by Meester and Park’s comic chemistry as two very different women finding common ground.
Victoria Strouce’s characters “Those Who Seek Endless Love” they also try to find common ground, but none of it feels authentic enough to register beyond their minor characters in a sitcom. A new entry in one of my favorite subgenres—comedies about families who must go on a journey to learn how to behave with each other—“The Seekers” stars people who are incredibly talented, but get lost in a film with no real human behavior. It’s one of those movies where the characters are pushed through sitcom beats instead of doing or saying things that feel natural. Some of the laughs come from the fact that these actors are undeniably talented, but they ended up being involved in a project that didn’t understand what it wanted.
Strouse was smart to cast his film with people who have proven their mettle in acerbic comedy, especially “Hacks” best-selling Emmy winner Hannah Einbinder, who plays Kayla. He arrives at the office of his lawyer brother (John Reynolds of “Search Party”) and brother (Griffin Gluck of “American Vandal”) and learns that his sister Scarlett (Justine Lupe) has joined the cult that gives the film its title. The Scarlett siblings hire a cult exorcist (Justin Theroux) to bring her back, but Kayla’s fear of flying forces them to take a road trip to retrieve Scarlett before a mass suicide makes that impossible.
Obviously, this collection can sell broad comedy with pit stops at a fat camp and a car chase with a kidnapped child, but it can’t convey the sitcomish nature of the perfect script to sell it. We end up knowing nothing about these characters except how they annoy each other (and us), which makes it hard to focus on how they got to where they’re going. In SXSW comics about where we’re going, this one gets lost.
