Bloomin Mud Shuffle (2015) Reviews

• A Girl, A Gun, and a Whole Lotta Fun

  Lilcount2015-12-14

  The opening shot of this film is great. A guy comes out of a bar at night, shouts a drunken comment at a passerby, and nearly falls on his face lighting a cigarette. The camera tracks him as he stumbles into a crosswalk, picks up a "yield to pedestrian" sign, and lugs it back into the bar. Before the credits roll, we know the guy's name is Lonnie. He's a thirty-something house painter, he plays video games, hangs out with his high school buddies still, and has a messy relationship with his newest girlfriend Monica. When the credits actually start (actually it's just a title card) we already know the whole story; the guy is a loser. Then director/writer/editor Frank V. Ross tells us the story again in loving detail. Bloomin Mud Shuffle is a quirky little comedy, a non-rom com. The guy and girl are hardly shown together. Each spends more time with friends and family than with the prospective life partner, which is pretty much why their affair goes nowhere. Shot on location in the Chicago suburb of Yorkville, Ross captures a modern slice of life: the angst of young white males neither smart enough, greedy enough, nor ambitious enough to fight their way into the vanishing middle class. Lead actors James Ransone and Alexia Rasmussen are fine, but Alex Karpovsky steals the picture as Lonnie's buddy and boss Chuck. Chuck is one of those know-it-all types who has an opinion about everything but is almost as big a loser as Lonnie. His only edge is he's in a stable relationship. Oh, yes, the gun. Early in the film there is a scene with Lonnie and more of his high school chums trapshooting. (All Lonnie does is pull the traps.) It's soon established that Lonnie owns a gun. Jean-Luc Godard said, "All I need to make a movie is a girl and a gun." In a Godard film, Lonnie would have shot somebody before the fadeout. Frank Capra would have had Lonnie about to blow his brains out before the appearance of a deus ex machina like Henry Travers. Frank Ross handles the situation by having Lonnie, on the verge of despair, wander into a Catholic church and confess to Father Tony (played by Dave Pasquesi.) This is another great scene and it resolves the plot. Nobody gets shot. If only real life were like that. This is Frank V. Ross' sixth feature film. He is a name to be watched. One thing is sure: he'll go a lot farther than Lonnie.