Last Call

This drama tries to capture the feel of community in a certain urban neighborhood, but it's totally undone by unlikable characters, dangling plot threads, and a distractingly uneven tone. Last Call begins with a death, and the moment the funeral scene ends, no one ever really seems to mourn again; it's forgotten by the very next scene. This lapse seems to happen to many plot threads in the movie. It's as if each scene were improvised from the ground up, and whatever details that didn't fit were just left hanging. In some scenes, Mick's father is working on a hopelessly dilapidated boat, and in other scenes, they go crab fishing in a brand-new boat (despite the fact that they have no money and the bar is struggling).

A light, bittersweet score tries to tie things together, but it, too, usually feels wrong for whatever the scenes are trying to convey. Then Mick claims to be "in his 40s," although he looks (and actually is) mid-50s, and the other characters appear to be the same age. Yet they act like immature jerks, drinking all the time (with no consequences), playing dumb practical jokes, and making bets about who can have the most sex. They constantly yell at and pick on one another and get into fights, and it's not very easy to like any of them. The rushed, last-minute, save-the-day finale is so hard to believe that it feels like Last Call leaves off with an insult.