“All Out Dysfunktion!” is a comedy/drama directed by Ryan LeMasters. It tells the story of five self-involved twenty-somethings who all live in the same large house. Although it is unclear if they simply each rent a room or if the arrangement is something more akin to a co-op, their connections and similarities are limited to only their place of residence. These are the main characters the film focuses upon:
Gator, played by Dan Sanders-Joyce, is an indie film maker. He is flippant and irreverent, although he connects to his moral conscious later in the film.
Tyrell, played by screenwriter David Bianchi, is an aspiring actor. He has OCD but that doesn’t stop him from being just as antagonistic as the others in the house.
Ranjit, played by Arsh Singh, is an Indian looking for work as a web coder. He is also infatuated with Pleasure as well as sexually aggressive toward Carrie.
Carrie, played by Angelica Chitwood, is an aspiring model. She is the moral low ground, easily the most despondent of all the characters.
Pleasure, played by Jenn Pinto, is a pornographic actress and webcam model. She has a sad back story, but mostly acts as a sex object and instigator.
Clarelle, played by Melinda DeKay, is the owner of the house or landlady. She used to be an actress and is also the Godmother to Gator.
Carrie is looking to use the large house in which they all live to throw a party. A few very nefarious men are going to pay her a lot of money, not to mention a lot of cocaine, in order to use the space. The other members of the house either blackmail her or are cajoled by her to not tell the owner/landlady of the house, Clarelle.
“Dysfunktion!” does a great job in many ways. The actors and actresses give great performances, and the dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny many times. Visually, it is very professional. The opening sequences are especially well done, with a ground level view of the party aftermath. There are a lot of two or three angle scenes, allowing us to follow the dialogue with ease.
Otherwise, there is not much else to like about this film. The emotional changes throughout the film are jarring and difficult to follow. A funny sequence will be immediately followed by a severely melodramatic one with no transition. Most of the interactions are aggressive and antagonistic. The characters deliver pithy/degrading/insulting one liners at each other and don’t engage in much actual conversation. There are hints to prior conversations and relationships that were more civil, but these are rarely shown.
The women are portrayed as sex objects or as evil and manipulating. The level of violence both threatened and acted upon towards them is unsettling. While the male characters can be amusing with their irreverence and pithy comments, the female ones receive and doll out abuse and vitriol. “Dysfunktion!” could have been a better movie simply by giving the women the same amount of well-rounded writing and attention given to rest of the cast.
There are some great moments. It is easy to imagine a large amount of this movie was written based upon real life interaction with Hollywood types, and those moments shine as some of the most authentic and interesting. But they don’t, unfortunately, raise this movie from the quagmire of drugs, abuse, and debauchery. They instead stand alone in a sea of viewer confusion.
– by Lane Vespertine
