Two friends (Jon Cryer and Rick Stear) find out that their missing high-school chum (Rafael Baez) is now insane and living at New York’s decaying Coney Island amusement park. Naturally the guys ditch work and set out in search of their bud and spend an inordinate amount of time wandering around the ramshackle landmark talking to a weirdo skeeball guy (Frank Whaley). Over time one guy confronts his own alcoholism and the other deals with family problems. Oh yeah and they find their nutty friend.
This one’s got a lot of indie cred: Whaley and Ione Skye have been doing the little-movie thing for years now and Cryer is a veteran of Schenkman’s “Pompatus.” The best performance is from Baez an up-and-coming actor whose depiction of mental illness (not an easy thing to do) is pretty disturbing.
This is the latest from Richard Schenkman best known for the equally talky and lethargic “The Pompatus of Love ” which also was about guys in their 30s (finally) confronting adulthood. Schenkman’s style of writing a directing is slow introspective and ultimately more suited to the confines of a small theater stage than the camera lens.
