Review of ‘The Drop’: Like much of the movie’s humor, baby thumps

A small group of charming, self-consumed, and privileged narcissists take a trip to an exotic vacation spot where things quickly get sidetracked.

It’s like “The White Lotus”. On the surface, there are certainly parallels between Mike White’s blockbuster series and director and co-writer Sarah Adina Smith’s feature Cringe his comedy The Drop. But while “Lotus” features a cleverly constructed script and an abundance of compelling characters with a rich, layered storyline, “The Drop” is thinly sketched. , has an extended sense of improvisational exercise while spotlighting characters that are often boring. A talented cast engages in haphazard dialogue that often falls flat. (Also, I’m not saying the sudden death spiced up the story, but I’m not saying that either.)

Rex (Anna Konkle in “PEN15”) and Mani (Jermaine Fowler in “Coming 2 America”) are young hipsters who live in Los Angeles, own a homemade bakery, and struggle to conceive. A couple. Others, with such earnest words, make it as if their entire relationship is an extended therapy session. I’m wondering if there are any pretty serious problems bubbling up with.

As longtime friends and new parents Peggy (Jennifer Raffler) and Mia (Aparna Nanchara) get married, Rex and Mani travel with the happy couple and their baby to Puerto Vallarta for a destination wedding. board the plane. Also on board that flight and paying for everyone’s first class accommodation are another couple they’ve known forever: Shauna (Robin Tede), a successful TV actress, and Shauna’s husband. Robbie (Utkarsh Ambudkar), a showrunner and enthusiast. A creepy kid watching 1990s porn on a smart device on an airplane with a namedropper and Shauna’s adopted teenage son Levi (Elisha Hennig). (“Levi’s is exploring,” Shauna explains, and Levi says, “We’re her sex-positive family. Great. You idiots.”)

When the group arrives in Mexico, they are greeted by old friends Lindsay (Gillian Bell) and Josh (Joshua Leonard). As everyone reconnects and basking in the sun-drenched moments, Robbie holds the baby and hands it to Rex. It’s such a beautiful moment for Rex, who hopes to have a child of her own in her near future…

And Rex drops the baby. Literally drop the baby. car. plank.

Spoiler alert: Baby will be fine, but she’ll have to wear a protective helmet for the next few months — but that horrifying moment cuts Rex to the core and sends her into an emotional tailspin. , keeps saying it’s an accident that can happen to anyone, but even if you reassure each other, you’ll never drop your baby.

From this premise, which seems straight out of the “Cut Your Enthusiasm” episode, we learn that Rex slept with about half the group, so we move on to weekend festivities. That her motherhood changed Mia’s outlook on life to the point where she could carry a gun and become a Republican. And Lindsay and Josh are bitterly resentful of each other as the resort struggles and is actively seeking investors.

With a foreboding score straight out of a horror movie, “The Drop” does its best to lean into dark satire. There are some choice moments. Hand it to each other while honoring the happy couple. A popular tragedy in the mid-1920s, Triangle Her Shirtwaist is her ashes of one of the women of her factory. (For the record: The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in Greenwich Village, New York, which claimed the lives of 146 of her garment workers, occurred on March 25, 1911.

OK, that’s pretty great, but too often the dialogue is more boring than snappy, like when Lindsay tells Rex: Because I know it’s the same as suicide. Well, irreversible things in life. give birth to a child and commit suicide

I can imagine the idea behind ‘The Drop’ was to introduce a collection of characters that I completely dislike but have a lot of fun watching. They run out of their welcome long before being subjected to one last cheesy joke and mercifully fade to black.