(The New/Next Film Festival ran Oct 1-4 and HtN has reviews coming your way like Chris Reed’s Everytime movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Actor Alex Karpovsky (Fits and Starts) has long entertained audiences with his offbeat performances in a great variety of roles (one of my favorites is his turn as a corporate trainer in Amazon’s Homecoming series). He has also occasionally stepped behind the camera to offer what feels like a natural extension of his unconventional take on the world. His first feature film in over a decade, Riptides, just premiered at Baltimore’s New/Next Festival. I didn’t love the ending, but before then it was great fun to let myself be carried away by the movie’s idiosyncratic current.
Steve Little (Mark, Mary & Some Other People) stars as Toby, an American living in a Mexican beach resort where he manages a local Airbnb property. He’s a happy-go-lucky man about town, though his favorite pastime—riding the waves on a boogie board—usually results in some pretty major testicular pain. Good thing he has thoughts on how to fix the issue.
Before he can get on that, he has to welcome new guests to the villa. They are Paul (Dylan Baker, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma), a self-help guru whose entire success is built on his very public recovery from addiction, and Michelle (Bojana Novakovic, Bloat), his daughter and manager. About to launch a lengthy stateside book tour, the duo are here to rest before the storm. In Paul’s case, that means drinking himself into a daily stupor.
Which kind of runs counter to his whole brand (you know, recovery and all). But while Paul is going on a bender—driving Michelle to distraction—Toby discovers who his clients are and starts listening to Paul’s work, gaining clarity of mind from the lack of beer and weed in his system. That’s when he discovers that he can carve out a spot on the boogie board for his balls (and up top for women’s breasts) and possibly start a lucrative business.
But then, tragedy strikes, and Michelle has to enlist Toby’s help in a scheme that is bound to go very wrong (you know, crime and all). Karpovsky maintains a firm command of his movie’s mood (until the conclusion), delivering dark comedy in a thoroughly enjoyable way. It helps that his two leads, Little and Novakovic, are at the top of their game.
Unfortunately for the protagonists, wrongdoing often results in unpleasant consequences. Fortunately for us, the cinematic byproduct of the mayhem is a genuinely good time. Nevertheless, things change in the final act, and while I am never opposed to tonal shifts, this one negates too much of our emotional investment to feel entirely organic to the narrative. That said, Karpovsky otherwise delivers laughs and drama in a winning mix.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
