“The Baltimorons” is about a recovering alcoholic and former improv comic who breaks a tooth on Christmas Eve while visiting his fiancé’s family in Baltimore, somehow finds a dentist who will treat him that day, and immediately falls in love with her. The dentist is a bit older than he is, and divorced, and quite depressed because her ex-husband married his new girlfriend at City Hall that morning. Which means that every Christmas Eve, she’ll automatically think about her failed marriage. When the improv comic leaves the dentist’s office, he realizes that his car has been towed for parking in the wrong place. The dentist offers him a ride to go get his car from the impound lot. Then we’re off to the races, in a quasi-romantic variant of “After Hours” that perhaps stretches itself a little too far, but it is always enjoyable and sometimes quite moving.
The improv comic, Cliff, is played by actor Michael Strassner, who cowrote the script with director Jay Duplass, a veteran of low- and micro-budget independent films, usually made in partnership with his brother Mark. (They’re both actors as well, though Jay isn’t onscreen in this one.) The dentist, Didi, is played by Liz Larsen, one of those “I know her, what do I know her from?” character actresses. I have no recollection of seeing Strassner in anything prior to this. But he’s clearly a natural screen actor who, like Larsen, understands that you don’t have to sell every little thing when you’re acting for the camera. If everybody else around you is doing their job, a little bit of emotion goes a long way. It’s often better to let the audience come to you, because the result is a deeper experience than if the movie is doing all the work for you.
What follows is one of those personality-driven films about potential lovers where the main question isn’t “Will they or won’t they?” but rather “Who are these people, really, underneath it all?” The answers feel correct and fundamentally honest, though the movie tries too hard at times to ensure you like the profoundly self-centered hero, who makes a mess of things from the beginning and digs himself into a deeper hole with every new scene.
The problem isn’t that he’s doing unlikable things. But the movie seems too worried that we won’t like him, when it should be entirely focused on making us find him interesting because of his contradictions. To be fair, that’s the film’s approach to Cliff about eighty percent of the time; I merely lament the abrasive depths that Duplass and Strassner decided not to plumb too deeply. For connoisseurs of the warped romantic comedy, let’s say that “The Baltimorons” is ultimately more “The Goodbye Girl” than “The Heartbreak Kid.” They’re both terrific movies, but the second one is way more comfortable with letting you sit with deep contradictions than the first one.
Strassner strikes some notes here, especially in reactive closeups, that are reminiscent of both Charles Grodin and Richard Dreyfuss in their younger years—edgy, unclassifiable actors who were always funny and soulful, even when playing the sorts of people you wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with in real life because you somehow got the sense that they might turn on you without warning. “If you keep talking, I’m gonna fit you for a muzzle,” Didi warns Cliff when he’s in the dentist chair. But it’s not really a threat, because she has a private smile on her face even when Cliff is at his most smack-able. There’s a plastic bit jammed in Cliff’s mouth to keep his lips apart, which makes it hard for him to pronounce consonants. But that doesn’t stop him from blatantly flirting with Didi, an act that they both know is only partly attributable to the anesthesia.
“His name shall not be mentioned,” Didi says when Cliff asks about her ex-husband. “He was a high school sweetheart who turned out to be a nightmare.” This comment feels like a premonition, or a buried realization that she’s about to embark on a different version of the same road. But she likes him. He’s cute, in his shambling, needy way, and he can be cool when he wants to. Mainly when he wants to get laid, but still. We never forget that Cliff has a potential mate waiting for him somewhere else, and that he is deliberately ditching her on Christmas Eve. Didi at first wants to ignore what’s happening at her ex-husband’s house, but when she gets a taste of Cliff’s game-for-anything prankster energy, she starts thinking about dropping in. If these two do hook up, it will be a crime of opportunity—two wounded people seeking comfort and shutting the world out for a few hours.
What follows is one of those personality-driven films where the main question isn’t “Will they or won’t they?” but rather “Who are these people, underneath it all?” The answer, when revealed, feels correct and fundamentally honest. However, there are a few moments where it seems like the movie is trying a little too hard to ensure you like the hero, who is profoundly self-centered and makes a mess of things from the beginning of the story, digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole with every new scene. This is the best movie Duplass has directed, and he’s made some good ones (including “Jeff, Who Lives at Home,” a failure-to-launch comedy that feels in some ways like a warmup to this).
Didi and Cliff are a fun couple. They seem like kindred spirits. I give them six months.
