Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder
Starring: Kareem Rahma, Mary Neely, Brandon Wardell, David Zayas
Kareem Rahma is best known for his viral web series 'Subway Takes', in which he interviews a mix of everyday New Yorkers and celebrities while riding the city's subway network. As co-writer and one of the two leads of director Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder's Or Something, Rahma brings the same sort of laidback energy to this work of fiction that made his web series so popular. The written dialogue is at times a little stilted, with the the two leads often talking at rather than with each other, but Rahma is an undeniably engaging screen presence, as is his co-writer and co-star Mary Neely.
Rahma and Neely play Amir and Olivia, a pair of strangers who meet one rainy day in New York when they both show up to collect a debt from Brooklyn resident Teddy (Brandon Wardell). They both happen to need the exact same amount of $1,200, but with Teddy out of pocket he directs them to a mysterious figure named "Uptown Mike" (David Zayas), who lives in Harlem.
Set over the course of the ensuing afternoon, the film follows Amir and Olivia as they take the subway to Harlem, only to find Mike won't be back until later. They decide to kill time together, having lunch at a diner and taking a stroll through a soggy Central Park.
Any movie that thrusts two strangers together in such fashion draws inevitable comparisons to Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, though filmmakers like Vincente Minnelli (The Clock) and Nancy Savoca (Dogfight) had successfully mined the concept prior to Linklater's take. But where Before Sunrise gave us two confident Gen-Xers, Or Something puts us in the company of a pair of millennials who have been raised on the internet and don't really know how to talk to people in the flesh. As such, the interactions of Amir and Olivia are awkward and cringy, both often blurting out things you can tell they immediately wish they had kept to themselves. As flirting goes, they ain't exactly Bogie and Bacall.
The malign influence of the internet on younger generations is all too clear in the opinions Amir and Olivia express about the opposite sex, all soundbites borrowed from charlatan feminist and MRA influencers. When the pair ride the subway they sit opposite one another as though they were attending a Catholic school disco, and watching them struggle to speak like normal human beings makes it painfully clear why birth rates are collapsing in the western world.
For all their social awkwardness, Amir and Olivia do have a chemistry of sorts, though you can't help but suspect it's more between the two actors rather than the characters they're playing. The dialogue isn't particularly insightful, and it too often feels like two people spouting well prepared monologues. But perhaps this is itself a commentary on younger generations, who spend so little time speaking face to face that they resort to rhetoric rather than conversation in such situations.
Or Something won't be spoken about in the same breath as Before Sunrise or The Clock or Dogfight, but it's an intriguing insight into why young people find it so difficult to pair off today, and it ends with a knockout twist of supreme cynicism.
Or Something is in US cinemas from August 22nd. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
