An extraterrestrial picks a junkie to inhabit in this seedy, inconsistently acted but often sharply comic urban tale
This gleefully lurid, picaresque journey through a few days in Cape Town for an alien inhabiting the body of a skeevy junkie named Barry (Gary Green) won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But scattered among the gross-out scenes – involving violence or bodily fluids or both, the bouts of softcore shagging, and innumerable garish “trippy” bits where the protagonist and his acquaintances do drugs – there’s actually some reasonably sharply comic, surprisingly touching and straight-up well-acted moments.
Presumably, the key variables are the improvising performers that first-time director Ryan Kruger, fluffing up what was originally a short into feature length, collaborated with for each scene. Some, like Chanelle de Jager, who plays Barry’s longsuffering wife and is given to long profane rants in Afrikaans about Barry’s uselessness, have real...
This gleefully lurid, picaresque journey through a few days in Cape Town for an alien inhabiting the body of a skeevy junkie named Barry (Gary Green) won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But scattered among the gross-out scenes – involving violence or bodily fluids or both, the bouts of softcore shagging, and innumerable garish “trippy” bits where the protagonist and his acquaintances do drugs – there’s actually some reasonably sharply comic, surprisingly touching and straight-up well-acted moments.
Presumably, the key variables are the improvising performers that first-time director Ryan Kruger, fluffing up what was originally a short into feature length, collaborated with for each scene. Some, like Chanelle de Jager, who plays Barry’s longsuffering wife and is given to long profane rants in Afrikaans about Barry’s uselessness, have real...
- 5/5/2021
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.