Jellyfish
2022 · 10m · USA
Directed by Gabe Ross
Genres: comedy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, humorous
A laid-back porch hang at the beach unravels when a friend turns up with his unhinged cousin Ian, whose erratic behavior detonates the afternoon. An ocean incident sends the mood lurching from sketch comedy to something stranger.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Anyone can make a hangout movie. Ross makes a hangout movie that swerves into a Beach Boys coda — that's worth four minutes of anyone's attention.
Ross stages a porch hang with a Beach-Boys finale glued onto sketch-comedy mood whiplash — Tim & Eric anarchy crossed with Wysocki beach-bro melancholy. The tonal lurches read as feature or bug depending on the night.
A beach-porch hang sketch that whiplashes through mood shifts and lands on a Beach-Boys-esque musical finale — that's a real structural bet, and Ian Abramson's erratic-cousin energy is exactly the right detonator. Confident tonal management.
Reviews
An absurd comedy of quick-witted lunacy and sudden behavior shifts, racing through an intense cycle of mood shifts and man-child antics.