It’s daytime on Dec. 24 when Cliff (Michael Strassner) and his fiancée (Olivia Luccardi) arrive for a holiday gathering at her mother’s house. Not even in the door, Cliff trips on a loose brick and breaks a tooth. The dentist Didi Daw (Liz Larsen), apparently the only one in Baltimore who will take a call, opens her office to treat him. The garrulous, needle-phobic Cliff isn’t an easy patient, and the problems don’t end when he leaves the dental chair.
Outside, he learns his car has been towed, so Didi, perhaps feeling the Christmas spirit, drives him to the tow lot. She even helps him cut a lock on the fence. Cliff, a failed comedian who acts as if life were a series of improv exercises, insists on taking her to dinner, notwithstanding his previous plans. For some reason, having come this far with her persistent, self-amused and personally intrusive patient, Didi acquiesces.
Demanding plausibility from a madcap setup has always been a fool’s game, but in “The Baltimorons” — the title comes from a sketch that Cliff used to perform — the director, Jay Duplass, and Strassner, his collaborator on the screenplay, didn’t script the scenario in a way that would persuasively sustain the characters’ interactions beyond Didi’s office. It certainly strains credulity that she would ignore ethical considerations and bring a weird new patient to a last-minute party celebrating her ex-husband’s remarriage.
The movie miscalculates its charm from the first scene, which depicts an unsuccessful suicide attempt, followed by a title card that’s used as a punchline. Still, “The Baltimorons” aims for bittersweet rather than wacky. Didi is lonely; Cliff struggles with sobriety. And while the film has clear affection for its Baltimore locations (it’s dedicated to the workers killed when the Key Bridge collapsed in 2024), considerably less thought has gone into creating convincing situations for those backdrops.
The Baltimorons
Rated R for themes of suicide and alcoholism. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.
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