An amazing directing debut from Ray Romano in which he gives us this beautifully crafted simple story about family, sacrifice, and love. This movie feels so real and everybody in it gives a great performance. Also an amazing story about the relationship of basketball between a father and son.
As performers, we’re often told that if you’re not able to obtain opportunities from others, then you must take it upon yourself to create your own. By writing, directing, and starring in Scrambled, Leah McKendrick has done just that – and created something impressive at that.
The movie follows Nellie (McKendrick) as she faces a weekly maelstrom of weddings and baby showers in her mid-thirties. The rungs on the ladder of life that her circle of friends are swinging up to still seem incredibly foreign to Nellie, and while everyone loves her, she begins to feel socially out of step and alienated. Though she’s single, and doesn’t currently want children, she visits a fertility clinic to learn about what it would look like for her if/when she changes her mind. After some startling information from the doctor, she makes the decision to freeze her eggs.
Millennials, this one is for you.
The egg-freezing process, from figuring out how to pay for it to abstaining from her frequent sexual encounters, is not easy for Nellie. She makes her way through it with the help and the hinderance of a large group of well-defined characters who tick a few characteristic trope boxes (the silently judgmental neighbor, the disapproving father) but who also, with the assistance of McKendrick’s bracingly smart script, resist the temptation to fall into cliche dialogue. Nellie’s world keeps moving on around her even as she tries to take it into her own hands; the tension (and comedy) emerge from the bald honesty and openness of her journey towards self-assurance.
While this movie is funny – and I mean funny – it does a fantastic job of investigating how fear of the future can paralyze us, spur us to action, or even sabotage us, depending on our circumstances. Nellie has been frozen in her late twenties, partying and failing to commit wholesale to a single career; her best friend (Ego Nwodim, in a fantastic turn from SNL) has a complete breakdown immediately after her own wedding thinking about the permanence and consequences of her nuptials; and her father (Clancy Brown), in egging Nellie incessantly to secure a sustainable legacy for herself, is really flailing in pursuit of his own legacy as he confronts his mortality. In a deeply moving scene at a support group for parents who have lost children – a group of total strangers to Nellie – it occurs to her that while she may not be in lockstep with the life events of her friend group, we needn’t measure ourselves, our successes, or our failures against those we know and love. Simply looking outside of our circle can reveal just how at-pace we actually are, so long as we keep going and resist the sinister pull of regret.
The typically elusive bit to a movie like this is the balance that must be struck between comedy and poignancy. Too much of either and you end up with something shallow or something self-indulgent. Luckily, McKendrick has written something really wonderful here. The script is equal parts hysterical and tragic, and for a story about Millennials in 2024, is there a more appropriate tone? In a world that’s robbed us of most of the adult life we’d all hoped for, blamed us for the death of a hundred industries, and staggered us with once-in-a-lifetime tragedies every few years, looking back can be just as traumatic as looking forward into the abyss of the unknown. And yet, we still laugh; we still persist in a system not meant for our success; and we still make jokes about it all day long, day after day, on TikTok, because we have to laugh at the absurdity of it. McKendrick’s script encapsulates this in Nellie’s cryopreservation journey, resulting in a story that’s not only resonant, but ultimately, sunny side up.
Martyrs Lane is a melancholic ghost story about Leah, a 10-year-old who lives in a large house with her family. Her mother seems cold and distant towards her and she's doing everything she can to get closer to her. One night, she's visited by a mysterious guest and each night she's given a task that reveals why her mother is the way she is. It's a compelling exploration of grief and acceptance, how buried past can affect the present. It's like watching Del Toro early works. Plays out more as a drama and scaring the audience isn't the main focus. It can get too slow and the reveal is easy to predict early on but it manages to make up for it with interesting characters. Some lovely visuals and terrific performances from the child actors. While it's predictable, it's still an enjoyable experience.
