Here is a strange case of a movie that I’m going to recommend you see, even though I don’t think it’s particularly successful. Although that recommendation is contingent upon the circumstances under which you see the film.
Freaky Tales is written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who’ve made a number of movies you may have seen, including the 2019 Captain Marvel movie and the 2006 film Half Nelson, which got Ryan Gosling a Best Actor nomination. This one takes place in 1987 in Oakland, which was Fleck’s old stomping ground, and to say it’s saturated with brightly colored nostalgia would be a drastic understatement. It’s also pretty nutty, or, more accurately, it would really love to be pretty nutty, enough so that you can see the beads of sweat as it tries its best. The movie is made up of a quartet of loosely related stories inspired by some part of Oakland culture at the time—we have a group of punk rockers taking on Nazi skinheads at an Operation Ivy show, a pair of women who rap battle the legendary hip hop artist Too $hort, and Golden State Warriors star Sleepy Floyd dropping 51 points on the Lakers in the playoffs.
In each story, our heroes do something seemingly superhuman, and the climax of each section is suitably outrageous, whether it’s a lot of gushing cartoon blood coming from the necks of the skinheads or Sleepy Floyd raining gruesome hellfire on a house full of white supremacists, and there’s undeniably a visceral pleasure to a lot of it. But that’s about all there is to it. Each part feels as if it could lift off into something more, but it never quite takes flight. Skimming along the ground is fun as far as it goes, but we never soar.
And still—this movie will kill in a packed late-night screening, where people are more forgiving, and that’s where you should look to see the film. Anywhere else, and this is a fine, slightly underwhelming diversion. With a raucous crowd, you’re guaranteed to have a blast.
Freaky Tales is in theaters April 4th.
