I’ve ascended. I am part of the elite. I, dear reader, received a screener. An advanced copy of Alex Kugelman’s Don’t Trip. Don’t worry, I won’t forget all ten of you when I’m partying it up with nepo babies in their abandoned homes in the hills (Beverly Hills, for those not in the know).
It’s a classic story. Boy writes a screenplay, nobody will read boy’s screenplay, boy gets blocked from sending his screenplay to the biggest producer in Hollywood, boy learns producer has a son around his age, boy stalks the son, boy learns that the son is a lunatic and still hangs with him to get to his father. Hijinks ensue.
This is Kugelman’s first foray into the world of writing/directing, and it’s an admirable first film. The MVP of this film without a doubt is the titular Trip Lefkowitz (Will Sennett), who brings an unmanageable amount of coke-fueled craziness to every scene he’s in. Anytime Trip is off-screen, I found myself asking my cat, “Where’s Trip?” From his first scene, he’s swinging for the fences
I say we get a guillotine and start publicly executing these motherfuckers!
All while his friend is cutting up lines of coke with a credit card.
The film starts with our protagonist, Dev (Matthew Sato), getting a call from his boss. She’s incredibly upset (rightfully so in my opinion) that Dev sent his script out to their competitors to be optioned without CC’ing her. And that obviously looks bad for her.
Now, does she go about this in the wrong way? Yes. Was she just stringing Dev along, keeping up his hope that she will one day actually read his script? Probably. But was she right for firing Dev after he essentially went behind her back and made her look bad? Also yes.
So Dev is now unemployed, and uses his remaining hours with access to his boss’s client list to bombard industry insiders with his script that he pitches as, “Deadpool meets Die Hard in a children’s hospital”. From this point forward, I was looking forward to all the awful things that were going to happen to Dev. That scene told me all I needed to know about him. He’s a boy living in a man’s body.
He laments to his beleaguered girlfriend, Monica (Olivia Rouyre), that he just needs to get his script in front of Hollywood superstar Scott Lefkowitz, who can make a film out of anything. Unable to reach Scott, he learns that he has a son and stalks Trip’s insta, learning that he is having a party. Much like a lunatic, he actually goes to this party asking everyone if they’ve seen Trip. He finds Trip in a bathroom minding his own business, trying to do coke, and is later approached by Trip to go to a NA meeting.
He comes back later that night to find Monica asleep. Obviously worried about him, she tries to convince him there are other ways to break into the industry, like making YouTube videos. Dev is insulted, because it’s all-or-nothing for him. This script will be made into a feature film. Dev’s the boy you just wanna shake really hard, hoping that will snap him out of this weird trance he’s found himself in.
Dev’s friendship with the twisted Trip evolves into a symbiotic relationship of sorts that involve camping trips with elaborate pranks, Hanukkah celebrations, $9000 gifts, and one taquito deep-throating competition.
incoming diatribe
Dev, how have you never eaten a gas station taquito? You’re in your twenties, living in LA, probably hard-up for cash, and a straight man. You’ve never stood in a 7-11 and looked over at that hot roller spinning hot dogs and taquitos indefinitely and acted on your primal instincts?
You’ve never been drunk at 3 am after shutting down a bar and were desperately hungry, stumbled over to the nearest gas station, grabbed a couple bags of Doritos, an Arizona Arnold Palmer, and while paying for them, grabbed a hot taquito off the roller with your bare hands, and ate it while you were paying for the other items, burning your tongue and esophagus? No wonder your ‘Dream Script’ is a fourth-wall-breaking Die Hard ripoff that everyone passes on. YOU HAVEN’T LIVED.
end diatribe
Anyways, one night, while out camping, Dev asks about Trip’s family and awkwardly reveals he has a script that he wants Trip’s father to read. Trip, who’s crazy, not stupid, instantly pieces together that this was Dev’s plan since they met. But he plays it cool, and strings Dev along a little longer. Dev, despite all the red flags and warnings from his girlfriend, delves deeper into this dangerous relationship with Trip.
I went in completely blind and was surprised with how funny this was, most of the comedy coming from Trip, using Dev as a straight man constantly confused by his non-sequiturs and wild ‘jokes’.
It’s not perfect, it suffers from the lighting issue our indie films have been plagued by for the last decade or so. Scenes are lit as if I’m watching a reality TV show and there’s no depth to the sets because of it.
Dev is absurdly annoying and it’s hard to want to root for him throughout the movie. Maybe it’s my own hangups with Marvel films, but once he gave the elevator pitch for his screenplay, I was immediately turned off. Then all of the bumbling mistakes he made with his former boss, the way he asked Trip to pass his screenplay on to his father was cringe-inducing, and I was really hoping he would get murdered by the end of the film.
I think the film succeeds in its theme that Hollywood is not just about who you know, but more so about what dirt you have on someone. I imagine that’s how Colin Trevorrow got The Book of Henry made and was given a Star Wars film to direct. You can be sure he’ll never tell anyone about that time you were partying a bit too hard and, whoops, someone ended up floating face down in a pile of their own vomit.
Don’t Trip is releasing later this month on Tubi and is sure to be better than 95% of the dreck that’s dropped almost daily on that platform.
rating: 3.5/5
Who Should watch this film?
- Nepo-Babies
- That Man-Child that swears Deadpool and Wolverine is the best film of all time
- Taquito lovers across the world
- People who love YouTube Pranksters
