Izzy Gets The F Across Town
Director: Christian Papierniak
Starring: Mackenzie Davis, Alia Shawkat, Haley Joel Osment, Carrie Coon, Lakeith Stanfield, Sheldon Bailey, Brandon T. Jackson, Kyle Kinane, and Annie Potts
Any method of transportation across greater Los Angeles, any day of the week, can consume your entire day. For a young down-on-her-luck musician named Izzy, who once played major festivals and had popular songs on Spotify, the journey from Venice Beach to Los Feliz is an arduous task filled with interesting characters from numerous walks of life.
Director Christian Papierniak composes “Izzy Gets The F*** Across Town” with the same spirit as the punk rock fueled soundtrack that tracks Izzy’s progress across town. Amidst the chaos of characters and plot turns is a ferocious performance from Mackenzie Davis who perfectly captures the self-defeating, excuse-riddled spirit of her character.
Izzy (Mackenzie Davis) wakes up after a one night stand stranded in Venice Beach. She soon discovers some concerning news about her ex-boyfriend who is newly engaged. Izzy decides to travel across town to crash the engagement party, however her path is littered with obstacles.
“Izzy Gets The F*** Across Town” offers character material for the talented Mackenzie Davis to showcase her impressive emotional range. Ms. Davis is the glue for this film. When a film focuses on the exploits of one character, someone we take every step of the journey with, it’s important for the character to be relatable or unique enough to contribute 90 minutes of engaging material. The accomplishment here is that Izzy is quite an unlikable character throughout the entire film yet she is still engaging. Mr. Papierniak, who also wrote the film, does an exceptional job of taking Izzy through the emotional ringer. As the film progresses Izzy is dealt numerous situations that continuously go from bad to worse; a broken romantic relationship, a sister that sees through her personality facades, and even a scene involving a hypodermic needle; anything that could go wrong does. Still, it’s hard to cheer Izzy’s success at times, her reasoning for the decisions she makes is tinged with self-sabotaging elements.
Mr. Papierniak makes some interesting choices in composing the script, layering poetic ramblings or philosophical discussions during encounters with the many people Izzy finds on her mission. It’s great dialog for the actors to chew on but it doesn’t really do much to engage the journey of Izzy more than being nice advice that goes in one ear and out the other. The shifting nature of the tone also gets somewhat distracting as the film progresses into darker dramatic territory. But again, Mackenzie Davis does a terrific job of holding it all together.
“Izzy Gets The F*** Across Town” is filled with interesting characters that engage with nice conversation, it also has some clever narrative turns that keep the film moving, but in the end, this film belongs to Mackenzie Davis. While it’s a joy to watch her practice her craft, it will be even more rewarding when a film utilizes her skill set to make something more memorable.
Monte’s Rating
3.00 out of 5.00
