Stumblecore

 

FREE TIME (B+) - Every generation gets the Mumblecore it deserves. It's just a matter of placing the characters properly on the autism spectrum. This debut feature, a minor-key Millennial riff on "Office Space," is well served by a short running time (just 74 minutes) and a winning no-name cast.

Colin Burgess (below left) stars as nerdy Drew, an office drone who, approaching his 30s, impetuously quits his soulless job as a data analyst (almost as an after-thought during a check-in with his manager) and sees an opportunity to make more fulfilling use of his free time. But he woefully miscalculates the allure of retiring in your late 20s and trying to live your modest dreams. Burgess, behind a silly porn 'stache and spectacles, is a perfect aimless dweeb. He is surrounded by a sharp cast, including a manic Rajat Suresh as Drew's roommate Rajat; the one-named Holmes as Rajat's bossy girlfriend who has no patience for Drew lazing around the apartment; Jessie Pinnick as a would-be love interest; and veteran James Webb (below right) as the exasperated boss.

 

Drew quickly realizes that he made a big mistake. First, he's broke. (As a former co-worker tells him at a party, the point of working for a living is being able to buy things, "products.") Second, the band he plays keyboards for has morphed into a country outfit since the return of its leader from a life-altering retreat with a guru, and Drew doesn't fit in anymore. (It's hard to tell whether he is bad at keyboards or he's just the odd man out.) He almost immediately starts scheming to get his job back in amusing inept ways. A last-reel twist aims for a Big Message about a potential rise of the office drones against mind-numbing capitalist servitude. First-time writer-director Ryan Martin Brown gets in and out of this diversion before it can fall flat, and he zips along to a tidy denouement.

You won't fall out of your seat guffawing, but I did laugh a lot, consistently throughout at the characterizations and the arch one-liners. It's a deceptively clever script -- it has something to say about office drudgery and that wall we hit in our late 20s careerwise -- and the cast finds the right tone of Millennial ennui. "Free Time" is a good use of your free time.

WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE (C-minus) - There's Mumblecore and then there's just mopey. In this case, we're toward the Gen Z end of the spectrum, the kind of film in which a 25-year-old moans about how old she is and scoffs at the idea of sleeping with a 20-year-old. Add in a heavy accent to the mumbling and grumbling, and this aimless story from first-time director Linh Tran becomes nearly unwatchable.

The movie is ostensibly about a reunion of sorts for two young women at the Michigan lake house of one of their boyfriends whose father has recently died, not that the plot point is developed at all, besides making the boyfriend a stoned, drunken, passive-aggressive jerk. The key pairing here is between Kim (Joyce Ha) and Amy (Jin Park), estranged friends walking on eggshells around each other. It's obvious that Amy used to have feelings for the lakehouse host, Jay (Sam Straley), but Kim swooped in after Amy introduced the pair. 

Also on hand is Lin (Qun Chi), a foreign traveler with a tenuous connection to the group. She seems to have little to offer the narrative, although she does pontificate about love and relationships during a fulcrum point of the film. Rounding out the quintet is Alex (Erik Barrientos), who is that quintessential lake house guy who supplies the drugs and acoustic guitar. 

It's all a pretty decent set-up, but Tran just does nothing with a spare script full of dull, whiny (sparse) dialogue that reveals little about the characters. Besides peeing outdoors in the opening scene, Amy is pretty much a cipher who coddles her insecurities and grudges. Kim continually tries to have an honest dialogue with her friend, but is rebuffed at every turn. Otherwise, their excessive quibbling over the two male ciphers pegs the Bechdel needle into the red zone.

Only occasionally do things come to life, as when Amy, out for a run with mop-topped Alex, gets instantly turned on by his admission that he had thought about how cute she was when they had met once before. But little else justifies an hour-and-a-half of post-teen angst dispensed by a bunch of drips.