Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (October 14, 2015)
Who better to review a movie about young women with financial/employment troubles than a middle-aged guy who’s held the same job for more than two decades? If I only wrote up films that connected with my life, I’d never be able to discuss anything other than Sideways, so a man needs to branch out.
Which leads me to 2015’s Apartment Troubles. New York City residents Olivia (Jennifer Prediger) and Nicole (Jess Weixler) attempt to make it in the arts, but they fail and find themselves destitute – and evicted from their apartment.
Nicole comes upon a possible solution: a reality TV show that showcases artists. They head to Los Angeles to attempt to find fame and/or fortune.
That synopsis makes it sound like Troubles actually has a plot, doesn’t it? Alas, that doesn’t prove to be true. Troubles boasts a vague theme and thinks it depicts real characters with growth, but it believes so incorrectly.
Instead, we’re stuck with a random accumulation of scene segments that add up to nothing. Even at a mere 78 minutes, Troubles feels long, as its lack of coherence threatens to make it an endurance test.
Truthfully, Troubles comes across like an audition reel for Weixler and Prediger. Both have earned a lot of work as actors, but obviously stardom eludes them, so perhaps they envisioned this film – which they also wrote and directed – as a calling card.
I can’t imagine it’ll succeed. Though both are pretty, neither Weixler nor Prediger can display much personality, as they make their roles annoying and self-absorbed but not much else.
If Troubles aspired to simply parody a certain sense of pretentious artistic entitlement, the lack of depth wouldn’t matter, but I suspect we’re supposed to like and care about Nicole and Olivia. We don’t. They seem irritating and never convince us they deserve our emotional commitment. We don’t care if they succeed – and we might actually root for their failure.
Troubles even wastes a good supporting cast that includes Jeffrey Tambor, Megan Mullaly and Will Forte. Pointless, self-indulgent and generally incoherent, Troubles bombs.