Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Phil Hoad

Linoleum review – wacky Moebius strip sci-fi will flip your expectations

Jim Gaffigan in Linoleum
Bizarro-world territory … Jim Gaffigan in Linoleum Photograph: Film PR handout undefined

This cosmic midlife-crisis drama written and directed by Colin West has a pleasingly homecrafted feel, amiably impatient dialogue and metaphysical prickles, especially with a climactic twist that’s akin to the one-sided Moebius strip paradox mentioned by one of the characters. It flips our expectations while connecting back to what we’ve seen before, running sci-fi back into science and chance into predestination.

American comic Jim Gaffigan stars as floundering TV presenter Cameron Edwin, the host of wacky children’s science show Above and Beyond. A former Crafoord prize winner with ambitions to be an astronaut, he is now staring at life limitations: divorce from wife Erin (Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn), also an academic big-hitter, as well as a humiliating ousting from his own programme, due to be sold off and fronted instead by the slick, sports car-driving Kent Armstrong (also played by Gaffigan). But if the arrival of his doppelganger and rival in the house opposite isn’t uncanny enough, then the crash-landing of a satellite – Russian, apparently – behind his house signals that we have definitely teleported into bizarro-world territory.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.