Riff Raff

After watching this movie I was left with a few questions. One of them being what kind of movie was this supposed to be? The bio says comedy/crime, but I thinks it fell short of that goal. Secondly, how could such a star studded cast come across as an average movie?

I'm not sure if was a script issue, casting issue, editing issue, or the director just didn't get the script, but I suppose my highest problem with the movie was that I had zero attachments to any one particular character. If anything Jennifer Coolidge stole the whole show, and gave it some semblance of a minor comedy.

It's almost as the movie was suffering from some type of identity crisis, in terms of not being one or the other. The trailer did its job enough for me to give it a watch, and the movie did have some great scenes, but I don't think the vision came out the way it was intended. It's an average movie at best, but given the cast, I was expecting something with a lot more to it. No meat, and all potatoes.

I don't typically write reviews, but I felt compelled to after spending $10 to rent this on Xfinity-a transaction that really pisses me off as I hate giving them money. While listening to Joe Rogan, Bill Murray discussed his three upcoming movies, saying Riff Raff stood out as a banger. I strongly disagree - it's anything but a banger. In fact, it's among the most worst films I've seen in a while. With a solid cast, I'm at a loss for how trash it turned out. If you're inclined to spend your time on it, go for it, but wait until it's free to watch - the storyline and overall execution was tired.

2025 thus far, seems to be on the trajectory for being the year of mediocre films, and Riff Raff is unfortunately added to this less impressive list. The cast alone grabbed my attention as I had no knowledge of its existence prior to its release, and the performances are solid across the board, yet I'm not convinced that the narrative needed such a bloated cast list. The film is a crime-thriller dark comedy, and here lies the problem. Riff Raff struggles to execute what it set out to be, the tone of the movie just felt weird, bouncing between tense dramatical scenes and quippy comedic moments all too often took me out of the experience. Don't get me wrong the characters are interesting, and some decent exposition is given throughout the story, but I felt this would have made a better mini-series instead of a film as its content feels all too crammed in. Plus, Fargo the TV show (2014) knocked it out of the park when it comes to juggling comedy and cinematic drama and I believe this is what the movie intended to achieve. If they took these exact same cast and characters and allowed more room for them to breathe, you could potentially have a banger of a season 6 under the Frago name - right actors/characters, wrong method. Overall, I was less than impressed with Riff Raff, it's not bad and produces some good characters but I felt they needed a lot more exploration to justify the climax.

I don't like it when a movie starts with a scene from the end and then rewinds back to the start - however, in this case I can at least understand why they needed to do it. The first 80% of this movie is painfully boring.

Which is a shame because the final sequence of the movie is actually really good and entertaining, proving that the film had the goods all along, it just wasn't using them.

The only scenes that were interesting in the early going were the Bill Murray and Pete Davidson ones. They were some fun villains and more screentime for them would've gone a long way.

'Riff Raff' feels like a waste of a really good cast. A lot of movies would kill to have a cast like this. A generous 5/10.

I went into this movie blind, having only seen the cast list and description. No Trailer. But a dark comedy with a great ensemble cast? Yes Please!

But the movie is sparse with comedy. Some light chuckles here and there. Some characters are just sad, like Coolidge. Everyone portrayed their characters very well though.

The story does a lot flash backs and time jumps. Almost everything is a cut away. It's not a novel story, it's actually very familiar. Actors play their usual tropes. Ed Harris moves on from his troubled past until it catches up to him.

Good use of scenery and music.

It's all well acted, well shot, but meanders without comedy. It was an entertaining watch. But a better script would have given the great cast more to do.

6.5*/10*

More reviews on my YT --GremlinLord615.