Christmas comes early for moviegoers, and Santa thought we were so good that we deserved an instant Christmas classic, “The Baltimorons” (2025). Alcoholic and six-month sober Cliff Cashen (Michael Strassner and cowriter) hurt his mouth on Christmas Eve and only finds one dentist in Baltimore willing to open, Dr. Didi Daw (Liz Larsen). After he overhears that Didi’s Christmas Eve plans were cancelled in a salt and lemon in the wound way, he decides to repay her for doing a couple of solids for him. Before long, they enjoy each other’s company so much that they do not want to return to their respective lives. Is this wonderful day a fluke or the beginning of a relationship for this odd couple? Though their film is lighter in tone, director and cowriter Jay Duplass and Strassner feel as if they have inherited the John Cassavetes mantle or at least the spirit of the Seventies American style of filmmaking.
Cliff and his fiancée Brittany McIntyre (Olivia Luccardi) have associated alcoholism with Cliff’s former career as a sketch and improv comic, and Cliff is determined to stay sober, but life as a straight man is lined with quotidian disaster. Brittany is becoming more like a warden making sure that he stays dry except he is on his own when he has a dental emergency. Comedians can often be needy and annoying in the wild so no one can quite blame Brittany for wanting a day off from being his personal audience. Strassner manages to be funny, overbearing but still a lovable lug despite it all. He is affable, but desperately in need of a looser leash if he wants a merry Christmas.
Didi is initially the perfect straight man keeping in check, calling him on his crap and stopping him from being his worst energy, but Larsen has an old school dame energy that is more Gena Rowlands than Barbara Stanwyck in the way that she is sensible and bemused. Larsen shows Didi coming alive from moving in an autopilot fashion of going through the motions to really locking in, paying attention, and going at it with gusto sometimes with an edge of a growl. It is an authentically sexy performance that shows that a woman can have it all: a great credit score and a mischievous side.
Didi and Cliff enjoy watching each other do their schtick when the other is not looking. Eventually Didi takes pity on Cliff before he embarks on another disaster, which Cliff correctly reads as a signal that Didi’s shrill refusals are just default settings for a person who usually follows the script until her ex-husband, Conway (Brian Mendes, who resembles Danny Huston), a crabber, burned it to ash when he deliberately got married to homewrecker Patty (Mary Catherine Garrison) on Didi’s favorite holiday, Christmas Eve, and got their adult daughter, Shelby (Jessie Cohen) and granddaughter, Maddie (Zoe Strassner), to come to the backyard reception instead of dinner with Didi thus guaranteeing to one up her for the rest of their lives.
It becomes Cliff’s turn to rescue Didi by making her look good in front of her ex and mess with her ex by openly insulting him with his gift for gab. It is not a heavy lift for Cliff because he really does see Didi as beautiful and fun. In turn, Didi comes alive and finds an untapped wellspring of energy and sprouts ideas of more adventures that they can embark on. Their dynamic and these adventures prove to Cliff that he still has it and can be funny without alcohol. Improv becomes a metaphor for life, love and the ability to find the best person to trust and play with on stage or in life. It does not always work, but when it does, it is magic. It is still a process for both of them to separate from the roadblocks that have kept them from living fully, and there are negative consequences for each along the way, which makes “The Baltimorons” feel real and rooted in a normal, unglamorous world while still adhering to the broad beats of a romcom.
While Baltimore is a beautiful city, it is not the first city associated with comedy and romance. Everyone usually thinks of “The Wire” though the documentary “The Body Politic” (2023) shows the early stages of how that gritty, urban war zone is fiction. “The Baltimorons” will not be confused with a pro tourism video, but it does offer an unburnished charm of practical life gussied up slightly for the holidays: crowded streets with people on the town for a quiet night out, a tow lot, an evening on the water, a brownstone lined street decked with wreaths. It is places like this that are full of possibility within reason, and it is that kind of possibility that makes the romance feel attainable instead of outlandish or a bad idea.
Duplass keeps it simple. Jazzy interludes fill the air during points of transition while the screen shows the cityscape. It is brilliant to set it during Christmas, so the lighting is a little more special without feeling out of place. Most of the action happens at night, and the morning after their day of exploits feels wintry in comparison to throw cold water on yesterday’s shenanigans so any happy endings are earned, not scoff worthy. Didi is a woman of a certain age who has lived more life than Cliff has ever known or wanted. Besides alcoholism, “The Baltimorons” gradually reveals that Cliff has more problems than just alcoholism that are indiscernible, but once revealed explains why he holds on to an outdated car, what happened to the house in the opening scene, etc. A point in Cliff’s favor is that he owns his errors instead of trying to blame Brittany for his behavior. (Spoiler: she did not save him any food during his emergency and told him to get something.)
People may criticize “The Baltimorons” for being so aggressively ordinary. To those people, have you seen a movie about comedians? The movie lags a bit in the middle and is at its least charming during an improv show that can be kind of painful but is deliberately so. Films about comedians are often the most depressing movies that you will ever see in your life. Duplass and Strassner deserve kudos for not pulling punches while tackling difficult topics and keeping the proceedings entertaining. The dialogue is organic and flows easily, and every person in the cast, especially Strassner and Larsen have great chemistry. So many things could have gone wrong to make this film abruptly stop being fun and derail everything that worked before.
Much like “The Holdovers” (2023), “The Baltimorons” is the perfect holiday movie about an unlikely pair that admire and have each other’s backs in a world that initially felt as if it denied them everything that they wanted and now is full of joy and excitement. It is also a perfectly timed love letter to present-day Baltimore before it gets undeserved denigration in the news if Presidon’t decides that he wants to pull another act of internal aggression against fellow citizens. It is also the unusual film with its ability to balance criticism of accommodating overly sensitive people while aggressively ridiculing racism and entitlement.
