Summary
A star-studded comedy where a group of friends plays a dangerous game: leaving their phones unlocked on the table. As secrets are revealed, the evening spirals into chaos.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 2:00 PM Dec 11, 2024, 2:00 PM
A bunch of actors with sitcom chops bring you a story that starts an awful lot like a sitcom episode but veers sharply into the uncomfortable, and it kind of works! (Kind of.)
Not everything about it stands up to a critical eye. There are pacing issues and clunky lines. The language gets pretty coarse at points and it doesn’t always feel natural or necessary. If you get hung up on whether every little story thread is tied up or whether every character is thoughtfully fleshed out, you might not have a good time.
But it is funny, and the cast is versatile enough to transition into the dramatic and gross parts. I think having seven actors on the stage telling a story driven by text messages is probably tough to execute, but this manages to stay pretty interesting throughout.
There is social commentary here and it’s pretty well-trodden. Affluent white folks are bigots, men are toxic, laughing at things makes you part of the problem, and we all have unhealthy relationships with our phones. This was probably very timely in the 2016 original but feels like it’s missing the next couple of bits of the story in 2024.
I mean this earnestly—it would be fun to see this with a laugh track (and awws and boos as appropriate)