Shithouse
Ratings: 3.5/5
Duration: 99 minutes
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Language: English
Director: Cooper Raiff
Written by: Cooper Raiff
Producers: Cooper Raiff, Will Youmans, Divi Crockett
Release Date: 16 October 2020
Releasing on: Theatres
Star Cast: Cooper Raiff, Dylan Gelula, Logan Miller, Amy Landecker, Olivia Welch, Abby Quinn, Joy Sunday, Ashley Padilla, Tre Hall, Alina Patra, Chinedu Unaka, Nick Saso, Wyatt Whipple, Juan Wood, Andrew Hales
Plot:
The story is about Alex (Cooper Raiff), a boy, who is all grown up and is now introduced to the so-called college life for which he feels he is a complete misfit.
Alex looks back at a few weeks ago when he still lived at home in Dallas with his mom (Amy Landecker) and his sister (Olivia Welch). Time did its part and the next thing he knew; he was 1,500 miles away in a completely different world. As against his comfortable bed back home, he is now sleeping on a cot in the sterile cement dorm room.
To add to his dismay, he has Sam (Logan Miller) as his roommate who wants nothing to do with him and who is an alcoholic-in-training. Sam is someone who will drink until he soils himself if that is what it takes to fit in. A character which Alex could barely resonate with.
Given his situation in general back at the college, Alex has given up on making friends. Instead of talking to real people, he finds comfort in having a conversation with his stuffed animal he brought from home, a silently loving puppy. The puppy is his friend away from home with whom he shares the hardships that he is facing in life due to a sudden turn of events.
And then that day comes, half-heartedly trying to make plans to attend a campus party, Alex is tempted to take the advice of the puppy who says, in telepathic subtitles, “You tried. Let's go home.” But somehow Alex makes it to the party only to release that party is going to change everything that he has been whining about so far.
Alex meets Maggie (Dylan Gelula) at the party. The night morphs from a thwarted hook-up into something that, for Alex at least, is better. The two hit the cord and find themselves walking around the town all night and sharing intimate memories. During that night, Alex realises that he is not the only one who is unfulfilled by the party scene surrounding them. To Alex, it is the start of something deep and magical. But when the sun comes out, Maggie is a different person.
The place from where Alex and Maggie, individually, look at the night defines the east and west words of the dictionary. For Maggie, it was a night that came and passed, while for Alex it was a night which changed him.
Maggie is baffled and at the same time disgusted that Alex starts to assume that he is part of her life now. In order to give out a clear signal, she dons impenetrable emotional armour by hopping into bed with the next stranger. And from there, their story takes make turns before it reaches its final destination.
Review:
Shithouse is a sweet-bitter love story between Alex and Maggie, two individuals who have an extremely diverse view towards life in general. The whole movie is suspended in a pleasant and intimate space between love and abandonment, order and chaos, leaving the nest and building a new one. The dialogues in the movie also feel neither improvised nor overwritten, and the story is neither too loose nor too structured – it just sets in very nicely.
Cooper Raiff, the first-time writer and director, plays to his performing strengths as the protagonist of the ‘Shithouse’. He plays Alex who is a shy but a winning character, who tries to woo a fellow student Maggie.
Alex, the way that Raiff plays him and virtually everything else about Shithouse is engaging because of how well it splits the difference between mumblecore lethargy and comic tenderness. One cannot help but suspect that there is a lot of Raiff in Alex, and so the character feels so raw and real. Also, the film's willingness to look so frankly at his vulnerability, in an unmanipulative way, feels especially refreshing.
Also, Gelula has been pretty incredible herself in keeping the charm of the movie and balancing it out. Whenever Shithouse starts drifting towards a more generic energy or gets the tiniest bit too plotty for its own good down the home stretch, Gelula is there to bring things back on course and makes this hushed little movie seem as delicate and formative as your own memories of freshman year.
Both Raiff and Gelula are complementing and have done a marvellous job on screen.
‘Shithouse’ reinstates the fact that is mostly known but not easily acceptable - that growing up can be a lonely process, but one that most people only feel like they have to go through on their own.
The movie is a good deal to change the feel of a boring afternoon, and is also a gentle reminder of how it felt like going to college and living through that life.
