Imagine if Howard Hawks were making a screwball comedy today – a guy and a girl spar with snappy patter, survive the crazed antics of their goofy friends and fall in love. If he set the movie in the shambles of a hipster pot dealer’s NYC apartment, you’d have Percival’s Big Night, one of the gems of Cinequest 22.
You’ll recognize the set-up: Two 24-year-old underachievers have so far made the least of their BFAs. Percy is infatuated with Chloe, and needs his roommate Sal to introduce her to him. Chloe arrives with her friend Riku, who is appropriately crazy enough to match up with Sal. The guys and girls bicker and banter, eavesdrop on each other and pair into couples.
What’s so refreshingly welcome about Percival’s Big Night is how well all of this is executed, due to the frantically paced dialogue from writer-director Jarret Kerr, who also stars as Sal. It’s briskly paced by director Will Sullivan and very, very funny.
The cast has performed Percival’s Big Night as an off-Broadway play. They were able to shoot the movie in six 15-minute captures that are blended together to look like one shot. Because of the madcap pace, the audience isn’t distracted by the single shot; instead, the technique intensifies the story compressed into the small apartment.
Percival’s Big Night is enough of crowd-pleaser to deserve theatrical release; in any case, hopefully, it will be available soon on cable TV, DVD, streaming or some other outlet.