by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

“Attending” the SXSW 2021 Film Festival this year gave me Wayne’s World vibes. That scene where they’re in front of a blue screen pretending they’re in different places. So here I am at SXSW Film Festival 2021 (watching it at home)! What delicious barbecue (Nutella with graham crackers) I am eating! Time to shuffle from screening to screening (couch to laptop) and hope I run into some celebrities (the cat!).

“Made for Love” (series on HBO Max, episodes 1-4)

If anything, Made for Love is a showcase for actress Cristin Milioti, a follow-up to her strong performance in the charming pandemic release Palm Springs. She keeps the series grounded when it struggles to pick a tone, but four episodes in, I cannot recommend it. Based on the novel by Alissa Nutting, Milioti stars as Hazel Gogol, fka Hazel Green, the wife of tech mogul Byron Gogol, played by a miscast Billy Magnussen. Magnussen, a scene stealer in Game Night and aptly cast as Kato Kaelin in Ryan Murphy’s The People v. OJ Simpson foregoes his “funniest guy at the frat house” persona in favor of a rather dull villain. Get it? His name? Gogol? It sounds like Google.

As Made for Love begins, Hazel makes a daring escape from Byron’s isolated compound in the California desert. She emerges from a hidden door in the ground, soaking wet and in a green evening dress. She stumbles around, looking for help, and Byron’s team is on her trail. See, Hazel has a chip in her brain, and is the unknown guinea pig for Byron’s new product “Made for Love,” which merges the minds of two people into one. Because… ? Byron can see what she sees, but not the other way around (because…?). She finds her way home to her father (Ray Romano) and his “girlfriend” Diane, a sex doll. The series expects that we should find a sex doll funny just because it’s there and it’s a sex doll. It’s a gag that should have been scrapped. It’s also disappointing to see Romano, a strong dramatic and comedic performer, generally wasted here.

Made for Love thinks it’s playing with grander themes of mind control and manipulation, but the tone is still overall light. And haven’t we already seen this already done in The Invisible Man (also a story about a woman escaping a controlling tech mogul)? By episode four, Milioti shows her range as we see who Hazel was before she met Byron. She was a clever, eccentric con artist, enthusiastic, excitable. Byron shows her on their first date how, using his vague technology, he can “transport” their dinner table through Rome and Paris. Hazel giggles and gasps. Comedian/actress Patti Harrison (a must-follow on Twitter) provides some comic relief as Hazel’s friend, Bangles. I appreciate that women make up a majority of Made for Love’s writing and directing team, but Milioti’s performance and Harrison’s appearance are not enough to recommend this aimless series, even with its compact, easy-to-watch 25-minute episodes.

Recovery (feature film)

Recovery is the quintessential pandemic comedy, one where each joke or gag feels like an inside joke between the audience and writer-stars Mallory Everton and Whitney Call. What was funny about the early pandemic? Not much, really. We were all so paralyzed with fear and overwhelmed by drastic changes to our daily lives. We were mad at the government for turning a blind eye, mad at family for not taking it seriously, and guilty that the concert we were looking forward to was cancelled as people were rapidly getting sick.

Recovery doesn’t lose sight of that, but it never ceases to keep things funny and light. A title card indicates that two weeks before COVID, sisters Blake (Mallory Everton) and Jamie (Whitney Call) are celebrating Jamie’s 30th birthday with a house of friends. People drink out of red Solo cups and furiously grab popcorn from the same bowl. THE SAME BOWL. Jamie is excited to turn 30. She’s looking forward to Coachella and travelling to Rome. She wants to invest in the stock market – specifically, “airplanes and hotels.” And best of all, Tom Hanks is healthy! Cut to Jamie and Blake as COVID hits, and now they’re isolated and working from home. They furiously Lysol their groceries and each other. They check in on their grandmother, Nana, who lives in a nursing home in Washington (they live in Albuquerque). The nursing home has turned into Dawn of the Dead – an elderly resident answers, “COVID-19 is in charge now.” Nana’s lover tries to get into her room for a tryst, but he has COVID. The sisters embark on a road trip to rescue Nana.

Everton and Call, who performed in “Studio C,” Brigham Young’ University’s sketch comedy show, play off each other very well. We could easily just watch these two women in a restaurant, riffing on each other, pondering weird questions, and still be entertained. They’re like Abby and Ilana of Broad City without the weed humor and NYC inside jokes. Blake is the more energetic, wilder one; Jamie, an elementary school teacher, is a bit more pragmatic. Staying, for the most part, socially distant from any other cast members, Recovery finds clever ways to add moments humor. One of Jamie’s class mice, which she leaves with a student, has suddenly given birth. “Have you ever smelled mouse afterbirth?!” shrieks the student’s mom over the phone. A random goof (played by Call’s husband and co-director Stephen Meek) tells the sisters from a window, “A lot of people turn alcohol into hand sanitizer, but I turned Dial into wine!” The film even takes some jabs at people who aren’t taking COVID seriously, like Jamie and Blake’s older sister Erin (Julia Jolley), who calls them from a cruise and casually talks about “piles” of bodies.

Everton and Call never really feel like sisters, but that’s fine. And a dramatic beat doesn’t hit very well, but that’s fine, too. Their conversation is extremely silly. Blake talks through selecting the right GIF to send a crush; Jamie asks if it would be a dealbreaker if you met the perfect man, but “he must motorboat every woman over 70 that he meets.” I would welcome a series of road trip films starring Everton and Call playing these same characters. Recovery is light, fun, and imminently quotable.