| Good Bad Things is mostly good things as Danny (Danny Kurtzman), a young man with muscular dystrophy who runs his own marketing agency, ventures into the world of dating apps. Danny, alone in bed, is scrolling through photos and videos of an ex-girlfriend, and then the next day meets with his accountant who tells him his business isn’t going to make it and needs to start letting people go now. | | 2024
Directed by: Shane D. Stanger
Screenplay by: Shane D. Stanger, and Danny Kurtzman
Starring: Danny Kurtzman, Brett Dier
|
Danny has other ideas; insistent that he’s going to land Rubi, the newest big dating app on the market. The screenplay has a really good structure to it. By framing it around Danny’s business, we have a ticking clock with the big Rubi marketing pitch happening in two months. Danny then joins Rubi to use it for research, or so he says, he knows, his friends know, we the audience know, that Danny wants to use it to actually find love, but he’s already prepared to use his disability as an excuse for why the app doesn’t work.
The film is very minimal, while Danny’s business does frame the screenplay, most of it is just Danny hanging out with friends, getting pissed off when his friends introduce him to new people, but then meeting and dating Madi who he matched with on the dating app. Just hanging out is such a big chunk of the movie and causes it to move so slowly. It’s arguably a necessary part since one such goal of this movie is presumably to give representation and a voice to people like Danny. Seeing them just hang out and drink beers with everybody else their age is an important part of providing that voice and representation.
Brett Dier (of Jane the Virgin fame) stars as Danny’s best friend. He’s delightful and charming and funny and possibly the greatest best friend in the world. His relationship with Danny is fantastic. Dier is the most famous of the cast and he’s also the best actor of the cast, lighting up every scene he’s in (which luckily is a lot of them). The rest of the acting isn’t as natural. There are times when you can tell it’s a low budget movie.
Danny’s relationship with Madi is awkward in the beginning, it seems like there’s nothing there and I can’t quite tell if that’s on purpose or not. It leads however to a thoughtful journey for Danny as he begins to self-sabotage but then starts considering why, and he makes a big, very intimate and scary commitment as a show of love not just to Madi but to himself.
Good Bad Things is way more romantic drama than romantic comedy (but Brett Dier does his best to keep it light at times), but the drama is very even-keeled and doesn’t get too maudlin, so it’s ultimately a nice watch. And it’s a very good and fair representation of a young man with muscular dystrophy.
|
