The Climb - 2019
The Climb contains the single best opening scene in a picture all year. It sets the stage for the production in many ways - how the film will be shot (a single impressive long take for each new scene), the absurdist comedic characters at its heart, and the litany of events that will be catalogued in its runtime. At its heart, this film is a buddy comedy, but it's really unlike just about anything else in the genre. It's often hilarious, even as it is so cringy at times that you'll want to crawl under your chair. The plot involves weddings, funerals, affairs, and everything in between.
But this film is really about friendship, albeit of a very unique kind. As a good friend of mine said so well, "these guys are not moral characters." In fact, on an integrity scale, they are rather decrepit. Mike's modus operandi seems to be making the biggest ass of himself possible in all circumstances. Kyle, on the other hand, is our "straight man," (in the buddy duo sense) but he barely has his life together either. Indeed, the two seem to be trapped in the kind of delayed adult adolescence from which Judd Apatow made himself a household name in the '00's.
For the most part, everything goes off swimmingly. Yet, my sole critique would be that the episodic nature of the story actually "took me out of it" in places. Between each massive oner (aka scene), much time passes. Relationships change. The men's lives push forward. I believe it was Michael Covino and Kyle Marvin's intention to give this kind of comprehensive overview of key events in these men's lives in fascinatingly chaotic overlap with one another. But, the time gaps took away my emotional buy in to them as characters at times.
While I believe the multiple year arc with gapping was problematic in ways, I DID love the film's thematic bookends. As a cyclist myself, I could doubly identify not just with the perverse take on Abbott and Costello between the men in the opening but how it was occurring over a total grind up a European hill with some serious gradient. Then, the film comes full circle and closes with another riding scene involving the friends and a child. Life is a journey may be a little TOO on the nose for a lesson taken. But it's still an endearing way to wrap the proceedings.
Taken in full, what you have is a comedy with real heart, belly laughs, and ridiculous shot style and gumption. My second favorite comedy of 2020, The Climb is well worth a watch.
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