Recensioni de* critic*

“Dinner in America,” written, directed, and edited by Adam Rehmeier, is a movie with anti-establishment anti-social quicksilver coursing through its veins, but at its heart it is a sweet love story, one of the sweetest in recent memory. Sometimes a movie comes along and surprises you.

“Dinner in America” delivers on surprise and explosiveness, but much of its offensive language, both racist and homophobic, feels gratuitous in a film that might have otherwise landed as an offbeat love story. There is, perhaps, an argument to be made for representing a time and place truthfully, but because the film does not critically engage with the uglier elements of the society it portrays, these become a distraction.

Adam Rehmeier’s sophomore film Dinner in America updates an early-2000s brand of suburban misfit ennui with a winning, occasionally uneven blend of sweet and sour teen angst. It lacks the cringey earnestness of Napoleon Dynamite or Ghost World’s undercurrent of resigned melancholy, content to let its unconventional characters follow a fairly well-trod formula... Dinner in America proves to be simple, goofy, and unexpectedly sweet.

From Rehmeier’s script to Gallner and Skeggs’ performances, this unlikely pairing’s adventure from dinner table to diner booth to white tablecloth is firing on all cylinders. While undoubtably unhinged politically and socially in ways that made me fondly recall the underrated God Bless America, it’s also one of the sweetest love stories I’ve seen in years.

Just know that if you love movies where the downtrodden come out on top, and the dark underbelly of suburbia is exposed, then you need to seek out this film as soon as it becomes available to the public. It’s honestly one of the best dark comedies I’ve seen in years, and I can’t wait to watch it again.

Dinner in America, with its surreal ear for dialogue, offbeat romance and cartoonish energy, is shocking for all the right reasons. Caustic exchanges and lopsided family dynamics make for entertaining verbal donnybrooks. Despite the careful 1990s period details, this is a bruising and welcome riposte to John Hughes’ 1980s teen movies.

It’s a narrative that has played out myriad times before, but Rehmeier infuses this story with a sharp, disarming humour; standard rom-com moments... don’t play out as expected. And the palpable chemistry between Gallner and Kreggs is enhanced by some stunning wide-screen work by director of photography Jean-Philippe Bernier and an infectious electro-punk score by John Swihart – which blends beautifully with Colin Alexander’s sound design, car alarms and other urban noises often heard in tempo – so that Dinner in America has a winning upbeat charm.

Twenty years ago, Sam Mendes’s American Beauty and Todd Solondz’s Happiness were at opposite ends of the spectrum of difficult weirdness for this kind of material, Solondz setting a gold standard for strangeness, dysfunction and discomfort. Rehmeier is at the American Beauty end of things. His film has its own truculent charm.

Heathers is an obvious reference point, yet while Dinner partly shares that film’s dark comic tone, ’90s US teen movie connoisseurs will detect more of a Pump Up the Volume and Welcome to the Dollhouse flavour – Patty’s early awkwardness certainly seems to echo through from the latter film.

The latest feature from Adam Rehmeier (Jonas, The Bunny Game) is an offbeat romance served with rumbustious energy and a punk spirit. Like the initially resistible central character, it surprises by growing sweeter, softer and more accessible as it unfolds. There is cult potential...

Adam Rehmeier's latest film... arrives with the anarchic energy of a cherry bomb tossed into the bathroom toilet of Middle America. His spiky screenplay has the outsider vibe of the likes of Ghost World and scathingly - and often scatalogically - spotlights family dysfunction while smuggling in a surprisingly soft-centred romance under the radar.

A film that could kind of be called a punk version of “Heathers” with a “Napoleon Dynamite” sense of humor, Adam Rehmeier’s film takes no prisoners with an energy that reflects its youthful protagonists. Some of the humor falls flat, especially in the clunky first act, but it works once its two leads team up and become a stronger force together than apart.