Fresno

Addicted to Fresno is full of artfully-crafted deadpan situations that probably created quite a few amusing bloopers. The star Natasha Lyonne has great control of her expression. The other actors and actresses complement her talents well, but she really stood out.

Presumably, this was a low budget movie but nevertheless the cinematography was excellent. As a photographer, I often was impressed with how well the lighting was controlled (for example, the poetry scene on the loading dock; scenes in the hotel hallway, never a good lighting situation; the pet cemetery scene). OK, maybe most people wouldn't care about these details, but if the producer had not properly lit these scenes, the movie would not have been as pleasant to watch even if nothing else had changed. Appreciate what you don't notice as much as what you do notice.

Don't look for any deep philosophical plot; just take the movie as the comedy that it was intended to be. Loved it.

Natasha Lyonne and Judy Greer star in "Addicted to Fresno," a 2015 film. It seems to have been done on a low budget, but the movie looks good.

Lyonne is Martha, who is allowing her sex-addicted sister Shannon (Greer), recently thrown out of rehab, to stay with her. She also gets her a job at the motel where she cleans. While having sex with a resident, Shannon accidentally kills him. The women cover the body with a sheet dump him in a laundry cart and take him to a pet cemetery, asking the owners to cremate their Great Dane and the laundry cart. Unfortunately the wife of the owner sees it's a body, and blackmails them for $25,000.

When knocking over the local sex shop only elicits dildos, the women decide to rob a Bar Mitzvah. In the meantime, Martha has had to break up with her girlfriend, and finds a trainer at the gym is attracted to her - but she's too busy trying to take care of Shannon.

Fun caper movie, full of sex talk and foul language, with good acting by both women. I thought the story and the situations were amusing. There is a slight serious undertone, but it fits in well with the film. The outtakes at the end are entertaining.

I don't know if everyone realizes what a huge feat it is to do an independent film. From the credits at the end, many people were involved. Kudos to them.

"Siblings can really sink each other." Not words commonly heard or realized often, but perhaps ones that can be true given particular circumstances. It's a theme that rings factual throughout this film, however unrealistic the scenarios.

Addicted to Fresno follows two sisters in Shannon (Judy Greer), a seemingly recovered sex addict who has very little moral compass, and Martha (Natasha Lyonne), an eternal optimist who is always going over the top to help her sister with her issues and devotes very little attention to her own well-being. The two work as maids at a local hotel in their hometown of Fresno--a city where not much happens and the people there hate it yet can't seem to get out. Shannon's antics come to a nadir when she accidentally kills a man. She and her sister attempt to escape the mess, which will prove to either help or harm their already rocky relationship.

It's definitely an anti-sibling movie--or at least it wants to be. I think mainly it strives to show us that the world is not as black and white as we have been brought up believing. Society tells us that as long as we hold on to family we'll be okay in the end. But sometimes they're the ones holding us back.

The small town trope plays on the whole "being held back" theme. The girls are two complete opposite personalities, yet they both manage to become complacent in a city that doesn't offer much for either of them.

The film is never hilarious, but does a good job of keeping the tone jovial throughout with some black comedy nuances and some enjoyable sequences thrown in, like a 13-year-old bar mitzvah boy performing a highly vulgar song filled with Jewish puns in front of his gasping relatives.

We get some nice scenes from the supporting cast as well, including Fred Armisen as Gerald, the owner of a pet cemetery, who doesn't get nearly enough screen time, and Aubrey Plaza as Kelly, Martha's personal trainer, who gets plenty of screen time but is mostly underutilized. Solid scenes from Molly Shannon, Malcolm Barrett, and Kumail Nanjiani are mostly what make this film watchable. The timing of the two leads compliments their chemistry very well, but they are given very little in terms of laughable material. I understand that it's supposed to be somewhat of a black comedy, but it never fully commits. It's not obvious enough and most people may just chalk it up to being unfunny. The storyline is intriguing enough and I like most of the decisions that it happens to make, but if we're going to be sitting down to view a comedy we need to know what we're watching.

Although a little uneven in terms of comedic tone, the laughs are there if you know where to find them. The story is one that hasn't really been told in quite this fashion before and the themes are relatable regardless of the impractical lengths of which it chooses to showcase them by. It helps that both characters are deep enough to attach ourselves to. It's not a terrible film by any means, it just speaks to a very specific crowd. And since its role as a comedy wears a bit thin, we may be tempted to dismiss the story as merely trivial.

Twizard Rating: 74 **Review can also be found at http://movies.mxdwn.com/reviews/movie-review-addicted-to-fresno/

I saw this yesterday at a sold out Newfest screening in NYC. The audience loved it. I wouldn't say that this movie is the next "Some Like it Hot" or "Sullivan's Travels" but it was a lot of fun. When I saw it, the audience was laughing a lot and they howled at the Bar Mitzvah scene and the 'fellatio' scene too.

Today I see three negative reviews here. Two, it would seem at least, are from men. One of whom tags himself: cinnyaste? I see that he has written 80 reviews here at IMDb. The two others are strangely similar, and were posted on the same day, the second by a reviewer who had only been an IMDb member for one day when this one solitary review was posted?

The audience at Newfest was more women than men. The two stars of the movie are women as are the writer and director. Cinnyaste (I guess the common spelling was already taken) claims: "Another misstep is the addition of a neither-here-nor-there LGBT agenda which doesn't mix well with the main story" Agenda? Let me say that again, Agenda????? Since one of the two sisters is a lesbian would subtracting her sexuality from the story have given the "main plot" of the movie less of a LGBT agenda? Well I guess it would. The resulting half plot would have been much less agendified.

The other sister has problems with an addiction and a codependency between the two runs as a serious thread throughout the film. However this is primarily a comedy and I can assure you the that there were a lot of laughs. Although this movie was admittedly a low budget quickie, which was mostly shot in the motel where it took place, it was much better than these two...... sorry three..... reviewers would have you believe.

To the reviewer who complains that he doesn't believe that any of the creative team are from Fresno... gasp!... I would point out that this story could have taken place in any one of a thousand small cities across this country. A recurring complaint about so many American cities these days is that they are all very nearly the same.

Apparently a lot of reviewers hated this movie and I honestly don't get why. It's an easy to follow movie, nothing too complicated, but still an enjoyable movie to watch. And sometimes it's nice to just relax and watch movies like this one. It's not the most funny comedy ever but it has it's funny moments. Most of the actors are normally more acting in TV-series but they do an okay job in Addicted To Fresno. Maybe I'm a bit biased because they come from series like Orange Is The New Black, Portlandia, and Parks And Recreation, and those are all shows I really love. I just watched this movie because I wanted something lighthearted with some humor and that's what I got so I can't be disappointed.