I Strain*

 We can't seem to get off the schneid with new releases lately ...

I USED TO BE FUNNY (C) - This infuriating comic downer positively crackles with indie possibilities in its first half hour full of snappy dialogue and interesting characters -- until it descends into a mundane story of obsession and depression. 

Our gal Rachel Sennott carries the day as Sam, a sharp standup comic who has hit the skids after a nanny gig went sideways two years earlier. She is shunning the stage and freeloading in a Toronto flat with a couple of comic pals, Philip (Caleb Hearon) and Paige (Sabrina Jalees), and the three of them have a clever patter that I could have listened to all movie. Unfortunately, the plot from hell takes over.

Turns out Sam used to nanny for a 12-year-old (you read that correctly), Brooke (Olga Petsa), who is now a 14-year-old runaway who haunts Sam. Brooke has a creepy dad (yet another film where a youngster's mom dies), and if you can guess that he factors into the fracture between Sam and Brooke, you get no extra points, because that was way too obvious and easy to guess.

Before you know it, Philip and Paige fade into the background, and we get stuck with flashbacks to what went south between Sam, Brooke and that cardboard cutout of a dad. The problem here is: Who cares? So Sam doesn't get to hang out with a 14-year-old anymore. Good riddance; she's moody little brat anyway. Things get worse, as the second half is dominated by a law-enforcement procedural; it's like a dull episode of Canadian "Law & Order." A convenient ending comes too quickly, too late (after a flabby 105 minutes), and it is too pat. 

Sennott ("Shiva Baby," "Bottoms") is a wonderful comic actor, and she probably is capable of reaching the necessary depths to pull off a dark story about a troubled stand-up comedian. But this feature debut from Ally Pankiw (who cut her teeth in TV and on music videos) is an infuriating waste of Sennott's talent, a film that takes a fatal left turn around the one-third mark and never recovers. It is one misstep after another for over an hour. (Try not to snicker when Sam's ex has the super-human ability to go from an unexpected kiss to full erection/penetration in about 8 seconds flat.) Don't be fooled by the trailer.

I SAW THE TV GLOW (D+) - Boy, what a couple of mopes this movie gives us. This meditation on .... having a favorite TV show, I guess ... is a complete mess, a Millennial wallow at the no-eye-contact end of the spectrum.

Owen (Justice Smith) is a painfully timid, sexually confused teen who befriends Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a depressed lesbian two years his senior, as they bond over their favorite show, "The Pink Opaque," in which two telepathically connected young women battle forces of evil. The film starts out in a refreshingly analog world of1996, when Owen is in seventh grade (and played by Ian Foreman) but it hop-skips into the 21st century after Maddy disappears and Owen must struggle alone with his otherness. 

I'd love to summarize a coherent plot, but there isn't one. It treats Owen like a baby throughout -- in high school he has to ask his parents (of course there's a dying mom involved in a movie like this, married to an emotionally distant dad) if he can stay up until 10:30 on a Saturday to watch the TV show. It takes the film a half hour to wake up to the fact that VCRs existed then, and time-shifting had long been a thing. (To call it an idiot plot would be an insult to idiots.)

At some point, Maddy visits the realm of the TV show -- a cheap "Xena"-meets-"Buffy" knockoff -- and Owen and the viewers are expected to believe that Maddy can exist in a different dimension. The show involves its heroes battling a villain named Mr. Melancholy. (I supposed writer-director Jane Schoenbrun couldn't get the rights to "Captain Obvious.") In one scene of the show within a show, Mr. Melancholy makes one of the characters drink a magic potion that makes a white liquid dribble out of her mouth, and god help me, but it looked like a cum shot from a porno. That's an example of how cheap and poorly thought out this whole exercise is. (It's also the lazy kind of movie where two characters in a bar can just whisper back and forth even though a band is playing.)

The two leads plod around like bored ghosts, Owen all slow and slope-shouldered. They speak slowly, and their scenes together feel like they are slogging through molasses. You want to fill in the obvious dialogue for them before they can manage to finally spit it out. I know that their situations involve some social anxiety and maybe mental illness -- perhaps some gender dysphoria, which is mostly hinted at -- but still, a director either needs to zip this along or develop some actual plot points.

As it is, "I Saw the TV Glow" comes across as an unintentionally amusing cult film, like "The Room" or "Rocky Horror Picture Show." (But what do I know; the Guild Cinema was nearly full of young adults for the summer matinee screening.) Maybe 10 or 20 years from now this will pack them in on Friday nights, with fitted-out Pink Opaque brigades shouting out the dialogue and singing along to the sad songs.

BONUS TRACK

From a key scene in "Glow," Florist with "Riding Around in the Dark":

* - I borrow "I strain" from my seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Narkis, who cautioned against overuse of the first-person in essay writing.