Talking Tribeca: Intramural

I’ve had the pleasure this year of screening a number of selections from this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, which takes place April 16th-27th.

Intramural
Directed by Andrew Disney
Festival Screenings

Every once in a while, there’s a film at a film festival that just doesn’t feel like it belongs there. “Intramural,” best described as a (slightly) more mature version of “Dodgeball,” is not the kind of film one would expect to encounter alongside top-tier independent cinema. Jake Lacy, who was terrific as the dim-witted Casey on ABC’s short-lived “Better With You,” stars as straight man Caleb, who reunites his intramural college football team as a way of reinvigorating his life when he unwittingly gets engaged to maniacal control freak Vicky (Kate McKinnon). There are some moments of coherent and clever parody in the film, like when a doctor runs onto the field after an injury in a lab coat proclaiming “I’m a doctor” and each time stoned announcers Bill (D.C. Pierson) and Dan (Jay Pharoah) narrate a game to no one in particular. The rest of the film is pure, excessive stupidity, and it’s hard to negotiate the two very different sides of the film. Unfortunately, the less intelligent side is victorious.

See it or skip it? Not over anything else. This is far from the best that Tribeca has to offer.