“The Stress is Killing Me” (2024) is set in a suburb in New Mexico on the twentieth reunion barbeque for the University of Mexico’s Class of 2002. Eight friends decide to expand the day’s festivities into a week. During the first dinner, they reveal how dissatisfied they are with their jobs and agree to accept an unusual challenge as a path to happiness: devote a week to exploring the career that they always wanted. Do yourself a favor and watch “Not an Artist” (2023) instead.
“The Stress is Killing Me” has a great premise, the camera’s sense of comedic movement and the broad sound cues work. The actors do some things well and others not so great. The movie is ultimately unsustainable beyond the premise and first day of festivities. People make movies for a lot of reasons, and it feels reprehensible to kick people who are having a great time creating together. What the movie misses in the story and real life is that you can have fun without it being good or successful, and fun is more important than anything else. Still, it is not exactly wrong to want more after a lot of hard work, but at most, this film was a series of sketches related with the thinnest of threads that wore out its welcome. If it took the premise a little more seriously, at most, it would work as a sitcom-esque television comedy that could run for a half hour weekly, but it would get cancelled early. It strained credibility that these people would remain friends for long after spending a week of bunking together under less than comfortable accommodations. They would have lost most adults at sharing a room.
If “The Stress is Killing Me” had a single issue, it did not feel as if it had a strong handle on who the characters were or organic relationship dynamics. Tom Carroll as director is way better than Carroll the writer. He defines people in two ways: careers and sex. He has zero grasp of how to depict a three-dimensional person or create a plausible scenario that adults would engage in, which would be forgivable though still insulting if he was writing for kids or a younger crew because at least there would be less life experience to pull from, but in adults, is negligent. Even though they probably never leave the house because getting film permits is a hassle, and it would run up costs, it did feel as if they were more on house arrest than vacation.
The Boyds, Todd (Theron LaFountain), the tax guy, and Sue (April Hartman), an office manager, are the hosts of the party, but their marriage has hit a rough patch. LaFountain is fine, but other than some comedic seasoning, is forgettable, which is better than memorable for being awful. It felt as if Todd was supposed to be an onscreen surrogate for Carroll, but until Carroll is prepared to face himself, he should forgo that route.
Sue comes up with the week-long celebration idea, and Hartman gets better as the film expands. Initially Sue seems like an uptight, joyless striver who is controlling and messing with people through room assignment and contrived scenarios, but her character is someone trying to reboot her life after sensing her mortality, and she is a big sweetie. Todd comes off as the fun one, but when the trouble in their marriage is revealed, it seems like a deal breaker or the beginning of one of those AITA posts where the wife stays, but gets a glow up while the husband stays a complete loser and wants their marriage to revert to the original status when he realizes that he is not getting the better deal that he envisioned.
Kiki Martin (Carly Christopher), a high paid DC defense lawyer, appears to be the protagonist and arrives with her friend, Marcie Wilson (Lisa Lucas), a nail tech. Christopher gets the best lines and nails them in the first half hour and is the one who presents as most camera ready, but Lucas ends up stealing the show by making her character feel like a real person and having organic chemistry with every single person. Lucas has a young Sally Field energy to her performance.
Kiki has a crush on Jason Farr (Grayson Berry), and Jason is the black hole where all fun goes to die. Jason is written as the most unappealing character who should have no friends, but Berry is just flat like the adult version of a kid trying to act for the first time on “Star Search.” With that said, Berry has moments. His line delivery of “I’m selling dog food, Paul” genuinely killed me so with work, something could be there. He is better when he is not over-acting so maybe his talents would be better utilized in a different role. Everyone’s delivery has that wooden sing-song tone and rhythm that takes viewers out of pretending that they are watching reality unfold, but Berry’s physicality does not work at all. The gears turning are visible in almost every scene, and it is painful to watch.
In contrast, Paul Tilden (Matthew Page) is given one aspiration that sounds as if it will not work: aspiring priest. It seemed as if it was one of those Christian produced movies with an agenda to proselytize more than entertain, but it does not take that turn. Page is the acting antonym to Berry. While his physical humor still reads as a performance, it is more hilarious and feels more naturalistic. He is funny alone or with a screen partner. Imagine if Ed Helms and Chevy Chase had a baby, it grew up, went to the gym a lot and was a fundamentally decent, awkward guy. If Paul was not played for laughs, it felt as if there was a real story there.
Barry Landers as Will Franklin, a restauranteur, is given nothing to do until the eleventh hour when he is presented as a solution to one character’s relationship issues. There is zero groundwork laid out for these two, and they were barely in any scenes together without the rest of the cast there. Seriously?!? Plenty of entrepreneurs cannot cook, and it felt as if his character was an afterthought in utero but never got sent to the NICU. Dr. Donna Lerner (Crystal Thomas) initially seems like a character who is going to be a side character/straight guy/butt of the joke, but Thomas takes some unique turns with what she is given and reveals a dry humor. While the delivery is stiff, she is genuinely funny even when given some dropped out of the sky random sex crazed scenes, she makes it work. Thomas could be likened to having a Catherine Keener quality.
If you do manage to get through “The Stress is Killing Me,” stay for the cute closing credits. It may be the best part of the movie and would have been a great opener to get the audience in the right frame of mind: to think of the characters as real people before the events unfold. Carroll could have tapped into something special, but he went for broad comedy instead. The bet does not pay off, and the movie is too long. There is too much good content to spend it watching this film, but if you do, you will see that it has some potential if everyone took a step back and tried again.
