Toronto 2026 Review: ANCHORS AWEIGH, Deadpan Profundity, with Sailing Metaphors

Matt Barats is an idiot.

He says so himself. He should have dropped a knee in his marriage proposal to his rich, blonde, much younger girlfriend. He didn’t. Now she is kissing her co-worker in the park. And here he is. On a boat he cannot sail. In a marina by the airport. Alone with his childhood DV videotapes. Wallowing in self-pity, unacknowledged narcissism, and a questionable artistic project of unconnected vignettes. Vignettes. Yes, vignettes. Vignettes.

After honing his confessional-cringe style with Cash Cow, a film about a struggling actor waiting for some Domino’s advert royalties to roll in while he wallows in a tent in Mormon country, Barats returns with Anchors Aweigh, a smart film about cluelessness. Or, perhaps, a self-aware film about a lack of self awareness. With nautical metaphors. And plenty of ‘em.

The thesis is this: If you are successful, you can look back at your past and laugh. If you are unsuccessful, then you look back at the same videos, photos, and memories, seeing only the lack of growth. And that is sad. Maybe even tragic. But that is really, really, funny.

The trick is Barat’s sense of rhythm and repetition. Which is saying something in an short, but still very shaggy 71 minute feature. At first, a joke exists. Perhaps it is just OK, or even pretty funny. But the more you repeat it, the funnier it becomes.

Eventually, repeated enough, it can achieve heightened hilarity. Watching Barat’s rather clueless sad-sack look on in horror at himself, while trying to get out of his situation is like deja vu for something you cannot remember. It is pseudo-profound, like a half-remembered Radiohead song. (This also happens to be one of the film's best and earliest gags.)

“You dream more on the water,” he tells himself. At least, when planes are not screaming overhead. He tries to win back his ex, while attempting to make new friends, in the marina, or at the park, to varying success. He revisits his past in the form of ... vignettes. He should have dropped a knee. That ought to have done it.

Barats’ self-deprecation and self-flagellation is endearing. It might be the measured and specific cadence of his delivery. Either that, or a studied narration, with him holding a too-large microphone and talking to the camera from a just-a-bit-too-far distance into the frame. Or maybe his ability to hold a reaction shot for just a split second too long.

But, it is more likely the winking intelligence underneath the no-budget DIY aesthetic and like-me-because-you-pity-me posture. He knows what he his doing with this deadpan delivery being right on the threshold of earnest and aloof, simultaneously. (You need only look at the quotation at the beginning of the film.)

He hopes that you know that he knows, even as everything about his onscreen persona suggests that he does not know that you know that he knows.

It’s a rabbit hole. And it's pretty funny, too. Coo. Coo.