Fantasia 2024 Review: RATS! A Blast Of Hilarious Punk Energy From Small Town Texas
Raphael (Luke Wilcox) is a a typical 2007 teenage dirtbag who gets wrangles into working as an informant for a local lunatic cop in directors Carl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky’s uproariously funny cringe comedy, Rats!
When Rafi is picked up for tagging a beloved payphone in his native Pfresno, Texas, he finds himself firmly in the sights of the town’s worst law enforcement agent, Officer Williams (Danielle Evon Ploeger). Convinced that Rafi’s small time dope dealer cousin, Mateo (Darius Autry) is using his hustle as a cover for supplying international terrorists with nukes, Williams and Rafi’s mom force him to move in with Mateo and report back on his activity. From there, Rafi’s life spins increasingly out of control in the most hilarious ways possible.
The millennial cringe comedy is recent subgenre that can either go really well, or really badly and Rats! belongs firmly in the former group. Embracing a kind of absurdist reality that would make John Waters proud, Fry and Nalevansky swing for the fences with every single scene, creating a wall to wall laugh riot that manages to overcome the potential for disaster that often results with films in the genre.
Right from the very start, the directors set the tone and inform the audience that Rats! is going to be a wild one when Raphael and Williams are introduced with the officer throwing herself through the air to arrest her mildly antisocial miscreant adversary. The film then follows Raphael to a holding cell where he’s confronted with fellow arrestee, Billy (Jacob Wysocki) who rants and raves for five minutes about all of the rad shit he does, finishing up with a lyrical ode to the beauty of Steve Irwin’s fine-ass daughter. It’s absolutely hysterical, and typifies the kind of ninety-mile-an-hour pacing that makes Rats! so special.
The first-time feature directors make the most of their debut, packing every frame with either an insane visual or dialogue-based gag or the kind of character development that you often don’t see in this type of film. Every character arrives on screen fully formed, we know exactly who they are, what their vibe is, and how they relate to the people around them instantly, it is incredibly impressive and that dedication to story and character even in a wild film like Rats! is impressive.
Every role in Rats! is cast and performed perfectly, from the top of the call sheet all the way down to the single scene wonders. In a world as insane as Pfresno, Raphael’s laid back, go-with-the-flow energy allows him to guide the viewer through a world that is heightened to a ridiculous degree, but still vaguely recognizable. When he goes off to perform his community service, he meets up with cutie pie mall goth, Bernadette (Khali Sykes), who matches his vibe and serves as a sounding board for his troubles while also encouraging him to be better. Mateo, far from the brooding drug dealer type we’d expect in most films, is a kind and gentle soul who lives in a bright pink house and always keeps room for anyone who needs a place to crash, it just so happens that he can also hook you up.
The trio of Rafi, Bernadette, and Mateo are our anchors in a town gone crazy. Not only is the psychotic Officer Williams after Mateo for nukes, the rest of the police are also dealing with a crazy number of disembodied hands – or hahnz, one of the film’s weirder running gags – popping up all over town. There’s wannabe anchorwoman Shay Burrata (Ariel Ash) practicing her non-regional diction in fake dispatches where she can’t quite pronounce the town’s name right (the P is silent), there’s wannabe rapper Flophouse (Ka5sh) with his new dirty track “I Love Selling Crack” (he does not sell crack), and on and on. It’s difficult to juggle such a huge cast of characters without muddling the tone and narrative, but Fry and Nelevansky handle it like pros and the film absolutely sings because of it.
Besides the ace character work throughout the film, Rats! is also impeccably designed to evoke the kind of bizarro world aesthetic in which these characters love. From stylized production design that perfectly evokes the 2007 aesthetic to a hyper colored palette that at times singes the retinas with its blazing hues, every inch of this film is meticulously designed to support the over-the-top adventure it is.
A kind of anti-mumblecore punk blast of electricity that is both loose with its narrative and extremely tight with its technical elements, Rats! is kind of a miraculous first feature that is sure to gain fans as it begins to travel. One of the more rambunctious screenings of this year’s edition of Fantasia, it’s a film I really hope I get to experience with an audience again soon, because it definitely matches the energy of a big crowd and rewards engagement. Though Rats! is likely to alienate the stodgier segment of the audience, it’s going to be a huge hit with those looking for some spice in their cinema, and I’m there for every last bite.
