Red Rocket (2021)

United States of America

Drama, Comedy

FilmNation Entertainment, Cre Film

Simon Rex, Suzanna Son, Bree Elrod, Ethan Darbone, Brenda Deiss, Judy Hill

Sean Baker

Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch

NA

texas, narcissism, relationship problems, porn star, estranged wife, selfishness, ex-husband ex-wife relationship, return home, 2010s, return to hometown, texas city, unlikeable protagonist

Finding himself down and out in Los Angeles, former porn star Mikey Saber decides to crawl back to his hometown of Texas City, Texas, where his estranged wife and mother-in-law are living. Just as this dysfunctional family seems to be making things work, Mikey meets a young woman named Strawberry working the cash register at a local doughnut shop.

Reviews:

Author: Geronimo1967
Simon Rex is "Mikey", a down on his luck former porn star who has to return to live with his unwelcoming ex wife "Lexi" (Bree Elrod) and her mother "Lil" (Brenda Deiss). He sleeps on their couch, can't get a job, so ends up dealing dope and that's when he meets the young - and innocent - "Strawberry" (Suzanna Son) who is working at a doughnut shop. He turns on all his charms and soon enough they decide that they are going to elope with $3,000 of his ill-gotten gains. Well, that's their plan anyway, Of course, his ex; her mother and the local drugs queenpin don't quite approve. At times it's quite niftily paced with quite a few laughs, but I found the plot to be really quite thin and predictable as the thing went on. As an observational piece on the sort of trailer-park existence in rural Texas, it is probably quite authentic, but it just didn't do much for me. Over two hours was just far too long to sustain the theme, and aside from quite an engagingly quirky effort from Deiss, I felt this was another film that could happily wait for it's small screen release before watching it.