If you want to be annoyed by irritating Millennials for close to two hours, have a go at “Stress Positions,” an absolutely maddening test of patience from Theda Hammel. From its Covid-era setting and off-putting smugness, to insufferable characters and snark poorly masquerading as humor, there is nothing I enjoyed about this certified dud.
Stuck in his ex-husband’s brownstone in Brooklyn during the pandemic, Terry (John Early) is keeping a very strict quarantine. He uses Lysol religiously and relegates strangers to the front stoop outside. It wouldn’t be much of a problem to keep visitors away, except Terry’s 19-year-old nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a gorgeous model from Morocco, is bedridden in a leg cast from a scooter accident and is holed up in the basement. Everyone wants to meet the teen, which causes an unwanted commotion for Terry, his friends, and the entire neighborhood.
There are some well-placed slapstick moments that are amusing, but the majority of the film is dull at best and annoying at worst. Some of the one-liners are funny, including the frank discussions about the “little brown kid in the basement,” but the unfocused and rambling story overpowers the only bright spots of the film.
By choosing to set his story in the summer of 2000, Hammel adds to the growing fatigue and push back to pandemic films. I’ve also had enough, because nobody wants to be reminded of what life was like back then (at least I don’t). Even worse, the characters are unlikable across the board, and making the storytelling heavily reliant on voice-over narration is a very poor cover for lazy writing and film making.
Much like my own forced Covid quarantine, I found “Stress Positions” insufferable.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 