Paddleton

There are some movies that seem, for lack of a better term, loose. There is a broader story-like thing that is being told but the smaller beats to get from beginning to end don’t seem to have much structure. I like a lot of those movies. The movies about nothing in particular that feel almost improvised in the way the characters talk to each other and how they move from one scene to the next. Like a camera crew just showed up and recorded people talking.

Paddleton, the new Netflix film starring Mark Duplass and Ray Romano, is one of those films. The film is only 89 minutes but most of the film isn’t spent on the main plot point at hand. Scenes are constructed like pudding on a plate, wandering as they see fit with no real outline for what may happen next. But where it wanders to is a spectacularly glum ending that saved an otherwise aimless movie. And left me a crying mess on the floor.

Paddleton opens with Michael (Mark Duplass) at the doctor’s office and being told that he might have cancer. His is best friend Andy (Ray Romano) is also present because, as we come to learn later, they are all each other have. Their lives are pretty mundane. They do puzzles, eat pizza, and watch the same movie (a film caled “Death Punch”) over and over again. They don’t have interesting careers or significant others. Just each other. And “paddleton.” The game from where the title is taken was created by Michael and Andy. A racquetball type sport where they hit a ball with racquets off of the side of an old drive-in movie theater screen with the goal of getting the ball into a barrel. Stupid and good.

Stupid and good is how everything stays until Michael’s cancer is confirmed and instead of waiting for the pain to kill him, he opts to go out on his own terms. With the help of a subscription pill, or a hundred. But in order to get the pills they have to drive 6 hours to get to a pharmacy that actually sells them. No one closer sells them for moral reasons. The trip is mostly insignificant but it gives the friends a chance to have a little change of scenery, though stress mostly gets the best of them. They’re conversations are mostly thin and deflective but that only works for so long before they have a mini blow up about Michael dying but Andy being the one left behind.

The aforementioned last 30 minutes are truly wonderful but the need to jump through time to get to the most important part shows just how wasteful the aforementioned wandering is. We see Andy and Michael try to keep things normal as Michael gets worse. Romano and Duplass’ performances for the first two thirds of the movie as gently as possible, very unassuming. And it would be easy to see how a viewer could find their thoughts drifting elsewhere. But both actors are obviously committed to these characters and their friendships because as the movie winds down their performances start to come to life. They’re tender and touching in a way that I haven’t seen in film in a while. Or at least not in a way that has truly hit home like this.

There’s a lot of humor here, though, unsurprisingly, the jokes don’t feel like they have much structure either. But without the jokes this movie may have been too disconsolate to be consumed. The direction isn’t anything spectacular but everything (the tone and the look) all blend well enough that nothing feels out of place or surprising. It’s an easy watch though it does drag a little in the middle but if you’re in need of your scheduled cry this may be able to get it out of you.

I give it 3 out of 5 trash cans.