This amiable, flawed indie has been winding some pundits up – and yes, maybe the auteur-star has a personality that might trigger a hives breakout among a proportion of his audience. This is 25-year-old Cooper Raiff, whose microbudget debut Freshman Year (alternatively titled Shithouse) was a study in semi-articulate anxiety in the manner of the Duplass brothers. Now he gives us this indulgent relationship comedy-drama in which he himself stars as Andrew, a recent college grad whose girlfriend has airily gone off to Barcelona.
Without the funds (or indeed a clear invitation) to join her, Andrew must come back to live in the family home with his bipolar mom (Leslie Mann) and stepdad Greg (Brad Garrett), sharing a room with his kid brother David (Evan Assante), getting a humiliating job in a fast food restaurant and nursing a growing drink problem. But going with David to a batmitzvah, he discovers he has a gregarious talent for being a professional “party-starter”, encouraging shy teen guests to get on the dancefloor. And this is where he meets the unhappily engaged Domino (Dakota Johnson), and her neurodiverse daughter Lola from a previous relationship, played by newcomer Vanessa Burghardt, an actor on the autism spectrum. Lonely Andrew is drawn to them and they to him; he offers to babysit Lola – who really likes him – and soon Andrew has fallen deeply in love with Domino.
