What a wonderful surprise! One of the bolder movie choices a director (in this case 2) can make is not making a character the center of your movie. Usually that’s a death knell for your movie, falling down random uninteresting vignettes or not building an interesting enough world so your film falls apart. Freaky Tales doesn’t get to the heights of a Monty Python movie, but it’s clear love of it’s place and the people that inhabit it make it one of the better entries to this type of movie, probably the best since Sin City, in my opinion.
Freaky Tales transports us to that electronica futuristic early video game 1987 Oakland. There are 4 tales directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck use to help us understand this place. 1) A mini war between the accepting punk rockers like Lucid (Jack Champion) and Tina (Ji-young Yoo) and the Nazi skinheads led by Travis (Angus Cloud). 2) Danger zone, a rap duo of Barbie (Dominique Thorne) and Entice (Normani) get invited to a secret show by Oakland Hip Hop hero of the moment, Too $hort. 3) Clint (Pedro Pascal) wants to finish his last job working for The Guy and have a baby with his wife Grace (Natalia Dominguez), but circumstances tempt him back into a life of crime. and 4) We follow Golden State Warrior Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) on one of his most fateful days, May 10, in Game 4 against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Semifinals.
What Boden and Fleck do best for each is the Russian Doll storytelling. They wonderfully gives us all the weird little pieces of 1987 Oakland that make it such a fascinating place to live. Overlaying everything is the “freaky tales” concept which they use a wonderful visual clue to indicate the interlocking storylines converging on that May weekend in the Bay. Under that we have a runner about the meditation trend sweeping the progressive city, showing up across all the televisions in each section of the tale. Under that, our 4 tales. But even within them we get mini side stories. Segments 1, 2, and 4 especially are bangers. Segment 1 looks like a street war action movie, but within that you get a cute mixture of immigrant and love stories sprinkled in. Segment 2 (my favorite) has a hip hop rap battle with a working class tale underneath, and Segment 4 (the most fun) has a basketball game crossed with something I won’t spoil, but’s a perfect ending to this big experiment. All 3 of these sequences firmly plant us into the little underbellies across Oakland, tying them together under a bigger umbrella that can be downright electrifying to witness, because there hasn’t been a movie like Freaky Tales in a VERY long time.
Which brings us to Vignette #3, the Debt Collector. This is a tough one. If you’ve seen the trailer, this is the part featured most, because Pedro Pascal stars in it. I’m certain Boden and Fleck needed this section to sell the movie and get it made. Problem is: it’s the movie’s Achilles Heel. There’s nothing in here other than Pedro’s flannel that makes this specific to Oakland in 1987 other than maybe a video store. As such, it feels out of time, and flirts dangerously with not being a freaky tale at all. But its also got the best story to make a standalone film, AND one of the truly shocking incredible cameos I’ve seen in a movie in years. So, it has to be in there, but it is an inartful fit, dragging down the movie’s momentum before we get to Sleepy Floyd. I’m certain one more pass could have smoothed the Debt Collector and really made Freaky Tales something transcendent, but alas we’ll have to settle with a 4-1 series defeat.
When you see the amount of films that I do, it’s a joy when you see pure love driving a movie. Freaky Tales is one of those rare gems, that made me wish I wasn’t 2 years old in Chicago but a teenager in 1980s Oakland. On second thought, one great Sleepy Floyd performance would NEVER surpass any of my wonderful Michael Jordan memories of those 1990s Chicago Bulls, as well as the comedians who call my city home. But congrats to you Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, for at least making me consider the possibility, a bigger award than any other praise I could give you.