Trivia:
Writer/director Janicza Bravo and writer/actor Brett Gelman are married in real life. When the movie premiered, their families - that are portrayed quite dysfunctional in the movie - hadn't seen the film yet. See more »
User Review
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Rating: 8/10
I saw this at the IFFR (International Film Festival Rotterdam 2017) as
a volunteers movie screened at the same time as being the opening movie
of the festival. What a brave choice for both! It was fabulous to see
Judy Greer introducing the film since I loved her as Cheryl Tunt in
Archer. She told us what a great festival IFFR is and urged us "not to
screw it up." She was standing alongside the writer/director Janicza
Bravo and writer/actor Brett Gelman. Apparently the latter two are also
married (I read that here in the trivia), which goes some way to
explaining the humour in the film, seeing as it finds a lot of material
in clashing together African American and Jewish family cultures.
There's also a delicious spoof of acting classes, with Michael Cera
pulling off a great contribution as a terribly pretentious actor.
Thanks to all the roles being cast so well, there were lots of awesome
little turns such as Rhea Perlman as a bitchy mum.
To tell the truth, I wasn't particularly in the mood for a quirky
comedy, the volunteers movie is always a surprise screening and I was
hoping more for the white-knuckle ride of Mole Song 2, but Lemon won me
over about halfway through with the ridiculous family reunion.
The meltdown of Isaac (played by Gelman) is expertly told and the movie
cranks up to a hilarious finale, when everything goes wrong at once.
I'm not going to get into the bizarre plot, I'd just encourage you to
see it for yourself. You wouldn't believe me anyway!
The comedy is so dark that it took the audience of mainly non-native
English speakers a while to get into it, but I do hope it gets a
cinematic release here in the Netherlands so I can watch it again. I
understand completely it wouldn't be to everyone's taste, however it
seems to me to be destined to be a cult classic.
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