“So… I’ll see you Monday.”

Story: Cliff and Brittany head to Brittany’s parents house for Christmas Eve. But when Cliff hurts himself and needs emergency dental work, he finds Didi, a dentist who’s actually at her office. This leads to a whole lot of crazy circumstances, a whole lot of soul-baring, and maybe a little bit of understanding.

Genre I’d put it in: Baltimore Christmas Rom-coms
Release Date: 2025
Remake, Sequel, Based-On, or Original: Original.

Gotta say: I love Citizen Kane even though for years I didn’t much care for it. I could talk about what an excellent cinematic achievement it was, and how much it impressed me. But I felt nothing. Baltimorons is kinda like that.

I love seeing so many images of the city I live in. I love that the creators were able to make such an incredible film on a budget that pretty much amounts to the cost of a lemon stick and two boxes of Berger cookies. I love the sincerity of the performers, and the rawness of the cinematography that gives serious documentary vibes.

These are characters I swear I could run into in a bar in Charles Village, or joke around with at Ravenswalk before a game. Michael Strassner and Liz Larsen are amazing as Cliff and Didi, two individuals who are going through their own personal Christmas bullshit. Together though, they seem to be able to enjoy a moment or two.

Director Jay Duplass (yep, Mark’s brother, for my Creep fans out there) brings a mix of emotional warmth and existential humor to the story, that gives viewers something to dig into. This is a sonberly humorous rom-com, focusing more on character arcs, emotional breakthroughs, and possibilities, rather than guffaws and guaranteed happily ever afters.

Perhaps it’s that existential vibe that didn’t quite sit with me. Instead of pondering the story, and what the characters would do next, I couldn’t connect with them. Their serious manner was borderline wooden to me; intellectually, I knew they were doing a good job, but they never quite touched my heart.

This premise is a good one; two people dealing with a particularly cruddy moment in their lives realize that they’re exactly what the other needs at the moment. That’s sweet, and affirming. And yet there’s an emotional dissonance that kept pulling me out of the narrative, no matter how well Strassner and Larsen connected on screen.

This may be a film I come back to and absolutely love. It might just be an issue of me being in the wrong headspace for a dramatic kinda-love story with tonally unusual humor right now.