Rats!

Screening after: The Warmest Color is Blue

Programmers notes: What if a renegade underground comedy with the spirit of Repo Man was made today by filmmakers weaned on Super Troopers and Tim and Eric? And what if everyone in the film pronounced the words “hands” as “hans”? These are the questions the deliriously funny Rats! seemingly dares to not only ask, but answer. I’m not sure there’s a film that made me laugh more often or harder while putting together this year’s New/Next lineup. And very much to its credit, this is a film with an arsenal of comedic weaponry that can come at you from any angle—crass, cerebral, visual, verbal, or meta–-at any moment, while always feeling like a unified whole. Did I mention that it’s also got a warm heart underneath it all, and here and there even suggests an aesthetic affinity with I Saw the TV Glow in the way it expresses a nostalgia for the recent past?

Paired with the exponentially deadpan short The Warmest Color Is Blue, this is a program for the true fans of film comedy: those that cheer on the art form as it keeps mutating and regenerating itself.

— Eric Allen Hatch

Q+A with writer/director Maxwell Nalevansky expected following the film.