Fishbowl California is a tale of two very different lives intersecting at a time of mutual difficulty. Rodney (Steve Olson) is an unemployed manchild in his late 20s with no discernible goals or ambitions. “You don’t even have time to name your goldfish”, his girlfriend Tess (Katrina Bowden) bemoans. It’s not long after this that Rodney finds her having an affair with another man (Jared Kusnitz) and his lease is terminated for slow and infrequent payments, leaving him without a place to stay.
Rodney runs into June (Katherine Cortez) when he’s using an extension cord to steal – or in his own terms, “borrow” – power from her house to charge his phone. To say she’s unimpressed is an understatement. June forces Rodney to tend to her property, in exchange for not calling the police. Although she’s abrasive and grouchy, June takes a liking to Rodney’s harmless juvenility, letting him crash at her house.
June’s got her own problems. She’s recently widowed, a misfortune that has reduced her to smoking cigars and drinking cans of beer. Katherine Cortez’s physical likeness to Frances McDormand is matched by their similar performative styles. Cortez’s June is a spitting image of McDormand’s Mildred in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: they get into verbal scuffles with irritating neighbours and both have been embittered by what life has thrown at them. At their cores, June and Mildred are good people. Their compassion for others can’t be permanently held down, even if they’d prefer it that way.
The scenes between Rodney and June are by far the strongest of the film. These two characters have a sizzling chemistry, bouncing off each other in comedic, if predictable, ways. There’s also something touching and human underneath the farce, of Rodney and June finding friendship and connection at an unexpected and much-needed time.
Fishbowl California is a film that aspires to a mix of Zach Braff’s Garden State and mainstream Hollywood comedy. Director Michael A. MacRae manages to meld these styles together well, just as he strikes a fine balance between humour and human emotion. Fishbowl California is better than most of the comedies you’d find in the multiplexes this year.
Fishbowl California is coming soon; details TBC.
