Fort Tilden movie review & film summary (2015)

So why should we bother spending an hour and a half with these people, much less care about them? Because eventually, they end up being more wounded, complicated and sympathetic figures than we could have imagined at the outset. And because – whether or not we’d like to admit it – they’re willing to say what the rest of us are thinking when they tactlessly open their mouths without a filter.

It’s difficult to create enjoyably unlikable characters; a fine line separates hilarity and hostility. For all its bull-in-a-china-shop crassness, Larry David’s persona is a delicate thing to pull off well. With “Fort Tilden,” writer-directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers have created two women who are drawn so vividly and so viciously, they’re hard to dismiss. And with great chemistry and – ultimately – vulnerability, co-stars Bridey Elliott and Clare McNulty bring them sharply to life.

Harper (Elliott) is the flighty, bitchy daddy’s girl – a quote-unquote artist who never actually creates anything, but rather picks up the phone and calls her wealthy businessman father at the slightest sign of trouble. She’s also the alpha and the meaner of the two mean girls. Allie (McNulty) is more treacherous in a subtle way – passive-aggressive and falsely sweet, but also annoyingly spineless and indecisive. She keeps telling people she’s heading off to join the Peace Corps, which is really more about telling people she’s heading off to join the Peace Corps than doing actual work. (A running bit in which everyone reacts with horror when she says she’s bound for Liberia provides consistent laughs.)

In their ditziness and daffiness – as well in their in their codependency – Harper and Allie are like a toxic version of the lovable airheads Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow played in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” or the deluded pals June Diane Raphael and Casey Wilson portrayed in the lesser-seen “Ass Backwards.” They need each other. They love each other. But they’re also holding each other back from facing adulthood – all of which will play out over one long and spectacularly disastrous day.