Review for "Kelly & Cal"

My most recent film review for Way Too Indie is on the oddball friendship film Kelly & Cal, which is a surprisingly dark, up to a point, story about refusing to change. Here is a sample:

"Kelly and Cal bond over their outsider statuses and the fact that they are kind of terrible people. It is easy to imagine pre-disability Cal as a jaded loner who believed himself to be better than everyone else. The accident has only given him a convenient excuse to gripe about how awful everyone is. Kelly also carries a holier-than-thou attitude that similarly borders on grating. Kelly & Cal’s real strength draws from how dark and weird it is willing to be. Like earlier 2014 indie release Adult World, Kelly & Cal finds unexpectedly offbeat and bleak notes within conventional narrative limitations. Unlike other “unlikely friendship” films, there is no whimsy or a sense of doomed beauty to the events on display. Up to a certain point, the film makes just about every character deeply unsympathetic and unlikable. Kelly is selfish and narcissistic, and her funk stems as much from arrested development as it does from postpartum depression. However, her husband is often an inattentive, emotionally unavailable asshole, and this makes Kelly’s bizarre relationship with Cal all the more plausible."