** outta *****

2 outta 5

Paddleton is an anti-comedy movie wherein one chooses to watch it on Netflix (a mere few weeks after it had its world premiere at the Sundance film festival in early February) thinking it’s a comedy.  It kind of is but really isn’t. It is mostly awkwardness and really long pauses that are supposedly meaningful. Or is it a ponderous drama about the inevitability of death? Or is it a movie about two friends nattering at each other continually? Is it a road trip movie with lots of quipping? It is all of those things. It is any good? Eh, not really but there are some decent character moments here and there.

Even the title, referring to a game involving tennis balls and garbage cans the two friends made up, is fairly irrelevant. Mostly it is a very long examination of one friend realizing his buddy is going to die which is somewhat compelling. At times it seems to be comprised of interminably long sequences of mumbling emotionally stunted statements which is kind of bad considering the movie is under 90 minutes. This is from director Alex Lehmann who made the truly heartbreaking drama comedy Blue Jay which also features two characters talking continually but Paddleton is a slog. This is not entirely unbearable, though, because the lead actors at least put some weight into their performances.

Michael (Mark Duplass) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer with only months to live and his only friend in the world is the neighbour who lives above his apartment, Andy (Ray Romano). They decide to take a road-trip to a place that sells the killer pills that Michael can take to end his life as he doesn’t want to endure the sickness until it becomes unbearable. But when they get them, Andy literally locks the pills in a safe so Michael can’t take them as Andy is having an incredibly difficult time letting go. A whole lot of yammering ensures, some of it has a point, most of it does not.

Romano’s Andy is the one who goes through an emotional journey even though he isn’t the dying one. This crystalizes when Andy is keeping the killer pills away from Michael as Michael says that he is “the dying guy” and Andy says, crestfallen, “And I’m the other guy!” It’s about letting a loved one go although Andy comes off as clingy. Still, Romano makes for a believable sad sack. Duplass as Michael alernates between understated emotions and half asleep. Sometimes understated performances from Duplass work well like in Safety Not Guaranteed or Blue Jay but here he vaguely seems irritated that he is going to die.

The movie has a shaggy dog quasi-improvisational style that can either be endearing or grating. Some bits work, like Andy keeps saying he is working on a halftime motivational speech that he is going to sell to a college football coach for big bucks but Michael doubts that it exists. So, immediately afterwards, Andy rattles the speech off by himself in a bathroom mirror and completely nails it. Other bits don’t work so well, like where Michael says that he wants to come up with a code to see if he can communicate with Andy in the afterlife and the notion sort of fizzles into a lot of mumbling. “Mumblecore” is a term for this genre of movies; unlike an explicitly scripted road trip movie such as Little Miss Sunshine or Green Book where scenes actually have thematic points here most scenes trail off. The random dialogue tangents and handheld camera work is meant to reflect immediate you-are-there realism but it is mostly annoying.

Both of the buddies don’t seem to have anyone else in their lives and they’re basically just friends by happenstance because they live in the same building. It is sort of about lonely people finding a connection, although Andy seems to be such an introverted headcase that even Michael sometimes can’t deal with him. They spend almost every night watching the same badly dubbed kung-fu movie over and over. The film, Death Punch, is about a student learning a killer move from his master which does have some thematic relevance by the end. Also references to the movie pay off in a fun scene when Michael and Andy re-enact Death Punch’s climatic scene on stage at an open mic.

Paddleton’s ending has some dramatic weight to it and some nicely weird moments, as Michael takes all 100 killer pills, breaks them apart, and mixes them in a drink. It’s an incredibly uncomfortable scene with them breaking each pill and pouring it in a glass, wondering since the process is so long maybe they’ll have time to reconsider. The moment when Michael makes his decision is dramatic and the enormity of his choice lands effectively.

Overall, Paddleton is a movie that tries to be so realistic and low key that it doesn’t really go anywhere for most of the running time. It has a good ending but it takes really long and has a lot of yammering to get there. If this pops up on your Netflix recommendations, keep scrolling by.