It's a Date
2016 · 7m · United States
Directed by Zachary Zezima
Genres: comedy, romance, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
A young couple meets on an awkward online blind date; it gets even more awkward when the young man starts talking about being an alien who spends most of his time trying to reconnect with his alien ancestors.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most shorts would bury the alien-ancestor subplot in the third act; Zezima makes it the entire date and somehow sells it as the most honest thing either character says to each other. It's the kind of beautiful nonsense that makes you realize how conservative romantic comedies actually are.
The film walks a tightrope between twee indie romance and genuine sci-fi absurdism without falling into either pit, though its tonal control would benefit from a sharper editorial hand—there's a formalist tradition of constraint-based comedy this reaches toward but doesn't quite lock into.
The masterstroke here is Zezima's decision to play the alien monologue completely straight; that single tonal choice—no winking, no irony cushion—transforms what could be a twee gimmick into something genuinely vulnerable and strange.