LA is a weird place. The hometown of Hollywood serves as the perfect backdrop for this absurdist comedy from writer, director, producer, and editor Harrison Atkins. The city responsible for creating dreams in the form of movie magic is the most logical setting for a story that reads like the oddest dream you can imagine having.
Sour Minnows follows Ricky (David Brown), a young cinema obsessed Angelino, who starts to experience a melting of his reality after encountering some unhoused people licking the road on a walk home from the grocery store. The subsequent surreal story is quite the ride for those willing to go on it.
The film opens with a closeup of Ricky’s face, inviting us into his head, which is where we can assume the rest of the movie is meant to take place. We’re placed within his psyche as his world unravels. Experiencing all of the nonsensical sensory overload, confusion, and distortions that he does.
Brown plays Ricky with a delightful offbeat charm and curious humor. Audience members who remember Brown from his similarly quirky role in Jury Duty are sure to enjoy his turn here as well. The rest of the cast, including Suzanna Son and Chase Williamson, are also able to balance the foregrounded humor and sinister underbelly of Sour Minnows’ competing tones.
Although competing, the varying tones are blended together confidently by Atkins’ filmmaking. Nothing feels out of place, because the entire movie feels a little out of place.
Sour Minnows is obviously indebted to the pinnacle of LA based surrealist cinema, Mulholland Drive. Whether intentionally or not, Atkins draws a lot both visually and narratively from Lynch’s masterpiece. There are worse movies to draw from or be influenced by.
However, unlike Lynch’s work and other notable surrealist pieces of art, Sour Minnows is not very evocative either emotionally or spiritually. Which isn’t necessarily a setback for the movie’s enjoyment. It’s still a fun and entertaining trip into the absurd.
It reads more like YouTube sketch comedy guys stretching a bit into a feature length film. We’ve seen examples of YouTubers wow audiences with feature length films earlier this year, but not much in the way of translating those sensibilities to film. The lack of emotional curiosity is made up for with endless laughs.
But the absurd and surreal nature of the film remains the focus. Everything about the film’s makeup adds to that sense of disorientation.
The sound design if often mixed to quiet, overlay, or distort dialogue. The dialogue itself is goofy and unconventional – neither fully cinematic nor wholly naturalistic. The editing is offbeat even within more conventional scenes. Everything is meant to be a bit bizarre.
There are no grand takeaways to be found within Sour Minnows. No sweeping meaning to be drawn from within it. Besides LA being weird. It’s a movie how weird of a place LA is. And that’s a cool thing to make a movie about.
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