‘Dinner in America’ dishes up a sweet odd-couple thrill ride

A review of the black comedy thriller, at the Reel Love Film Fest now

On the surface, Dinner in America doesn’t sound like it’s the kind of movie that one might describe as “sweet.” It’s about angry, disaffected, pyromaniac punk singer Simon (Kyle Gallner, never better) teaming up with naive oddball Patty (Broadway’s Emily Skeggs), conning her family into giving him a place to hunker down for a while so that some trouble with the cops can blow over.

Patty is a college dropout who works at a local pet store, cleaning out cages where the animals have made a mess. Every day, she gets made fun of by two overbearing asshole jocks on the bus to work, the boys making sexually threatening comments and calling her “retard.” (One of the jocks is played by Nico Greetham, who also stars this weekend in Dramarama at Outfest LA; there, he’s as innocent and lovely as he is threatening and rude here.) She takes her daily lunch break in the back alley behind the store, sipping on a juice box.

One day she locks eyes with Simon as he shelters on a fire escape from the cops, who want him for attempted murder, as he recently burned down the home of a girl who he met as a fellow participant in a drug trial, which he signed up for in need of “scratch.” Patty tells the…