The Baltimorons

The Christmas season is defined by the contrast between light and dark and so, too, is “The Baltimorons,” the exceptional new indie comedy directed and co-written by Jay Duplass. It begins with Cliff (Michael Strassner) attempting to hang himself. Duplass, though, recounts this in long shot, an angle typically denoting comedy, and sure enough, Cliff winds up sprawled on the floor when the rope breaks, as startling as it is side-splitting, light and dark in equal measure. Indeed, later Cliff will explain the rope snapping was on account of his “holiday weight.” Flash ahead six months and Cliff is sober, engaged to Brittany (Olivia Luccardi), and has quit the improv comedy scene that exacerbated his tendency toward depression. He’s studying to be a mortgage broker, he says, always adding that he’s not joking, which can’t help but make you wonder if he is joking, hinting at dissatisfaction with his new life. As if manifesting that dissatisfaction, he bumps his face against the door of Brittany’s family house on his way in for Christmas Eve festivities, necessitating emergency dental surgery, performed by the only dentist available, workaholic Didi (Liz Larsen) who has been abandoned by her family for Christmas Eve festivities of her own, and triggering an unexpected comic adventure between the unlikely duo traversing Charm City on the holiest of nights.

“The Baltimorons” takes its title from the name of Cliff’s improv troupe before it went haywire, and rather than merely functioning as a character detail, Duplass’s entire movie is sculpted in the spirit of improvisational comedy. Cliff’s sudden tooth problem might as well be the audience shouting, “Dentist office!” when asked to provide a location. And though all the complications and incidents that follow, from Cliff’s car being towed, to the duo crashing Didi’s ex-husband’s wedding reception, to them going crabbing in the middle of night, might sound as if they strain credulity, “The Baltimorons” is not operating on traditional screenwriting terms. Even before Cliff and Didi wind up at an unlikely Christmas Eve improv pop-up and wind up onstage together, they are already caught up in the moment, egging one another on, spiritually saying, “Yes, and” to whatever this is. And whatever it is, thankfully, is not something that is ever truly decided or summarized, ultimately left up in the air, refusing to provide one big pat answer just as it refuses to minimize Cliff’s very real problems or reduce Brittany to a mere complication or impediment; she cares about him. 

Strassner also holds the light and dark in equal measure in his performance, as hilarious to watch as it is hard, suggesting something like a modern John Candy had he received the kind of roles he deserved. At an AA meeting near the end, when Cliff says the standard opening line about being an alcoholic, it resonates with fullness hard to believe until you hear it. As good as Strassner is, though, it’s Larsen who truly shines in bringing “The Baltimorons” home. There’s more than a little of “Harold and Maude” here and the way she calls him “kid” continually keeps cutting the whole relationship down to size. Her big husky laugh at the absurd things he tends to say and do conveys both disbelief at herself going along at this situation and implicit understanding of why she would. She evokes no sense of narrative programming, just someone stepping on the stage of alive and letting herself be carried along. “Where are we going with this, kid?” she asks as the movie ends, unsure but curious, utterly alive to the possibility.