Who doesn’t love oddball couple comedies? Whether you’re talking Toy Story or any movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, there’s something about a pair of unlikely, maybe even ill-suited mates setting out on an adventure together that just tickles us, the movie-going public. Unlikely buddy movies, that’s what we’ll call them.
Sundance flick The Long Dumb Road – starring Tony Revolori and Jason Mantzoukas – is one of those.
I can sense you staring blankly at the screen: Tony Revolori you’d remember as the young lead in Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Mantzoukas on the other hand is a bit player in everything: Dennis Feinstein in Parks & Rec, Pimento in Brookyln Nine-Nine, Derek in The Good Place… He steals the crazy arse show in everything, so it’s ace to se him have the chance to be balls-out crazy for the length of an entire film.
The Long Dumb Road sees Revolori’s Nathan accept Mantzoukas’s Richard‘s services as a mechanic – and then agree to take the recently fired hitchhiker along with him. Of course, they spark up a friendship, of course booze- and not-booze-related hijinks are involved, of course they ultimately grow as people. Think about it: volatile/enthusiastic Mantzoukas helps the repressed Revolori become a man before he even makes it to art school in Los Angeles. Mantzoukas is forced to grow up a little on the journey, become more reliable. This shit writes itself.
It’s a buddy road movie, guys, it’s an established genre. We’re not rewriting the genre here, we’re having a laff. It’s Friday, guys, don’t you just want to have a laff?
The movie’s written by indie director Hannah Fidell and Silicon Valley writer Carson D. Mell.
And it looks to be an enjoyable romp, ey, ey, ey? Yeah, we’d watch The Long Dumb Road. It’s out in the US on demand and digital on November 16 – hopefully that extends to us poor schlubs down here too.
