The same appealingly anarchic, punk-scented strain of indie comedy that made cult favorites of “Repo Man” and the more recent “Dinner in America” also marks territory for “Rats!” Maxwell Nalevansky and Carl Fry’s debut feature is a sustained goof whose nonsensical progress scores higher for energy and attitude than wit, let alone substance. Truth to tell, the humor here is frequently at a pretty crass level that might induce mere eye-rolls if less deftly handled. But the writer-director duo lend it all a certain deadpan panache that’s diverting even when the material is less than inspired. At its best, often spiked by gleefully gratuitous gore, this very tall Texas tale trades in a kind of snarky absurdism likely to leave suitably jaded viewers in stitches. Yellow Veil opened it on limited U.S. theater screens Feb. 28, with digital release following March 11.
It’s 2007 in the faceless fictive Lone Star State suburbia of Pfresno, and nearly everybody seems to be flying a freak flag of one sort or another — though precious few seem aware of their peculiarities. Raphael (Luke Wilcox) is a community college student who’d seem very unthreatening anywhere else. But here, his tagging a derelict public phone booth one afternoon gets him tackled and shackled by the alarmingly overzealous Officer Williams (Danielle Evon Ploeger).
After a night in the drunk tank, he’s released, only to find his hysterical mother (Elisabeth Joy) convinced he’s a budding criminal by the same rogue cop. Both have decided he should be thrown out of the family home, into cousin Mateo’s (Darius R. Autry) crib. That’s all right by the two young men, as it happens. But Williams has an ulterior motive: She expects Raffy to spy on his relative, whom she somehow suspects is selling plutonium to Osama bin Laden. He’s not, of course — the person actually doing that is a guru-like neighbor named Jeremy Pillows (John Ennis), whom a couple of FBI agents (Health Allyn, Reynolds Washam) are closing in on. They’ll nab him soon, if the world’s worst policewoman, who’s running amok on several fronts (including at her moonlighting pancake-house job), doesn’t somehow blow it for them first.
Bemused stoner types Raphael and Mateo are the biggest normies in this landscape — soon joined by Bernadette (Khali Sykes), whom Raffy meets and crushes on in their shared litter-pickup community service duties. But nearly everyone else is bananas, sporting advanced psychological or substance issues. Among many colorful characters surfacing in the margins here are a Dollar Store cashier (John Valley) who thinks he’s Steven Seagal, a hostile “squatter” housemate (Marc Livingood) whom Mateo tolerates, a married couple with desperate aspirations toward local-TV-news stardom (Ariel Ash, Brian Villalobos) and so forth.
Some of these turns are pretty strenuous, working best when kept brief. The longer their performers are indulged, the more we realize the level of social satire here is pretty basic. As the Officer Doofy-goes-psychotic villainess, Ploeger dials it up to 11 right away, leaving her performance nowhere to go but over the same “top.”
Frequently profane and scatological dialogue spins wheels, coming off more juvenile than outrageous. (There is the odd good line, as when Raphael explains general mayhem to Bernadette with “I actually don’t know any of these people. This is just my … circumstance.”) Some running non sequiturs never land, such as a severed-hand epidemic discussed only as if the word were pronounced “Hans.” A few detours are kinda meh, like rapper and cast member Ka5sh’s music video for “I Love Selling Crack.” If that last sentiment is meant to be glazed in retro irony, it’s still no funnier than it would have been 40 years ago.
But “Rats!” nonetheless does provide a good time overall, thanks in large part to Fry’s lively, varied editorial pace and punchy visual ideas highlighted by production designer Sadie Moore’s colorful decking out of the main location, Mateo’s house. There’s also a soundtrack fully stocked with post-hardcore bands’ album tracks and other goodies from fabled indie label Epitaph Records.
The co-writers constantly throw so much new stimulus in the exquisite-corpse-like narrative, boredom isn’t an option, and misfired jokes pass before you can groan. But what really gives their wayward construct the esprit as well as connecting tissue it needs is, in the end, simple violence — which is delightfully random and excessive here, lending the whole an assertive, agreeable cartoon surrealism.
Before the climactic bloodbath, there’s a notable fight over nothing in a women’s restroom, spontaneous major harm at a BBQ and miscellaneous other eruptions. In contrast to the concurrent horror comedy “The Monkey,” where bloody sightgags arrive every 10 minutes like clockwork, this splatstick obeys no particular logic whatsoever — and is definitely more amusing for it. Yet when the only three likable characters here manage to survive that onslaught, there’s a sweetness to the fadeout that reveals surprising charm beneath the film’s vigorously rude surface.
