‘Freaky Tales’ has its charms, but a truly mixed bag
Chaos. It’s how to best describe the discombobulated mess that is “Freaky Tales,” a Tarantino-esque action-comedy that feels like an extreme outlier in the oeuvre of the filmmaking team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. Best known for their nuanced character studies of conflicted males in acclaimed features such as “Half Nelson” and “Sugar,” the duo went big in their previous effort, the billion-dollar earner “Captain Marvel.” As if to prove they haven’t betrayed their indie roots, their follow-up is anything but a cash cow. It’s more like a bull in a China shop.
An ode to Fleck’s San Francisco Bay roots, “Freaky Tales” consists of four separate but intermingled stories in which characters frequently cross paths, often without acknowledgement or recognition. The commonality is that all of them eventually take a violent stand against hate. It’s a noble endeavor, but the execution is massively inconsistent. The intent is to celebrate Oakland’s cultural diversity as well as Fleck and Boden’s spectrum of movie influences. But the two elements seldom meld.
It helps if you can switch your brain to airplane mode when you enter the theater because the less you think the more you’re likely to appreciate the copious amounts of quirk on display. It also helps to have a modicum of knowledge about the history of the East Bay circa 1987, a time when hip-hop and punk were on the rise, as well as white supremacism. Oh, and so were the Oakland A’s and the Golden State Warriors, led by their NBA-all-star guard Eric “Sleepy” Floyd. All play heavily in a tale brimming with cartoonish violence in service of sketchy sci-fi mumbo jumbo.
Some of what you see is rooted in fact, while other events spring from the vivid imaginations of Fleck and Boden. It’s all very “Scott Pilgrim” in that the blend of reality and fantasy is either something you run with or run from. With great effort, I went with the former. At times, I was glad I did. At others … Let’s just say the movie is never less than intriguing, even fun at times. But it just doesn’t coalesce into a satisfying whole.
Rather, it plays like a series of “SNL” sketches, some better than others. Of the four “chapters,” I most appreciated the first, titled “Strength in Numbers,” in which a band of neo-Nazis attack a punk rock club, assaulting patrons and vandalizing musical equipment. This also happens to be the one component based in fact, as the punks decide to fight back when the skinheads return a few nights later and are met by bats, spikes and any weapon the headbangers can get their mitts on. The segment is brutal but richly gratifying.
Chapter 2, “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” is relatively gentile by comparison, as the combatants here do their fighting with words. The good guys are BFFs Entice (Normani) and Barbie (Dominique Thorne), aspiring performers and ice cream slingers who are invited to a hip-hop happening where they are drafted into a sexually explicit rap battle with Oakland native Too $hort (Symba). It’s an inspiring segment in which the “little ladies” take down the hulking Too $hort, whose hit song “Freaky Tales” furnishes the film’s title.
The bloodshed returns for Chapter 3, “Born to Mack,” in which the movie’s marquee star, Pedro Pascal, plays a thumb-breaker with one last job to do before he can retire to a peaceful existence with his pregnant girlfriend. Of course, that’s not going to happen, as the past finally catches up with Pascal’s Clint. The highlight here is a great scene involving Pascal and Oakland native Tom Hanks, playing a supercilious video store clerk named Hank. He quizzes Clint on classic films before fate intervenes. For me, it was the movie’s best bit and disappointingly brief.
Moving along to Chapter 4, “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd” reveals quite a bit of appropriation, mostly from the original “Ocean’s 11.” In it, thieves led by a crooked cop known only as “The Guy” (Ben Mendelsohn) concoct a plan to simultaneously rob the homes of eight Warrior players during their playoff game against the eventual NBA champs, the hated Lakers. But the felons hit a snag and end up on the wrong side of a Bruce Lee-type scenario in which Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) carves out a reputation as a superhero. And that’s on top of his 29 fourth-quarter points against the Lakers just hours earlier.
Where does it all lead? Unfortunately, nowhere. It’s almost as weak as the one thread linking the four stories. And that would be the eerie green light associated with something called Psytopics (think Scientology), promoted in an infomercial featuring Sleepy Floyd and his loyal followers. The fake ad appears at the beginning of the film and the end. The difference is that when you see the spot the second time, the people surrounding Floyd are now familiar faces, whereas they weren’t earlier. OK. So?
Like I said, none of it makes a lick of sense, less so for people who aren’t in on the host of insider jokes and references familiar only to longtime Oaklanders. All others will be left scratching their heads. But the performances are first-rate, the production design inspired and the nostalgia factor through the roof. It’s also interesting observing the clever ways Fleck and Boden intermittently bring their various characters together, each unaware that they are about to fatefully intersect. Is that enough to sustain a nearly two-hour movie? That’s something you’ll have to consider. For me, it worked to a point. Yes, it’s derivative of bigger and better flicks, but in the end, it’s mildly entertaining, albeit instantly forgettable.
Movie review
Freaky Tales
Rated: For language throughout, drug use, sexual content, slurs and strong bloody violence
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis, Normani, Domineque Thorne, Tom Hanks, Jack Champion, Ji-young Yoo
Directors: Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden
Writers: Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden
Runtime: 107 minutes
Where: In theaters on April 4 (limited)
Grade: B-
