Film Review: Riff Raff

Riff Raff
Director: Dito Montiel
Canopy Media Partners, Signature Films
In Theaters: 02.28.25

As a critic who sees the vast majority of films released each year, I’m often asked questions about how exciting it is to get to see so many great movies, or about how I manage to sit through all of the terrible ones. The truth is that the majority doesn’t fit into either category — they are middle-of-the-road attempts at good storytelling that vary in their degrees of success. The new poster child for this is Riff Raff, which fails almost as notably at being truly bad as it does at being good.

Vincent (Ed Harris, Apollo 13, The Truman Show), a reformed ex-criminal, is spending New Year’s Day at his secluded cabin with his wife, Sandy (Gabrielle Union, Bad Boys II, Almost Christmas), and her teenage son, DJ (Miles J. Harvey, Supercool, The Babysitter), before DJ heads to college. Their quiet retreat is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of Vincent’s estranged son, Rocco (Lewis Pullman, Top Gun: Maverick), his pregnant girlfriend, Marina (Emanuela Postacchini, Robots, The Seven Faces of Jane), and Vincent’s ex-wife, Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge, The White Lotus). Vincent suspects Rocco is in trouble, and his instincts prove right when ruthless mobster Leftie (Bill Murray, Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters) and his enforcer, Lonnie (Pete Davidson, The King of Staten Island), begin closing in. As tensions rise, long-buried family conflicts resurface, culminating in a violent showdown that will test Vincent’s efforts to leave his past behind.

The fact that the screenplay was by John Pollono, whose 2021 adaptation of his own play, Small Engine Repair, really worked for me and established him as a very promising writer with a knack for tension and well-drawn characters. The two films are similar in that they are both unmistakably the work of a playwright, favoring minimal locations and relying heavily on dialogue. Where the latter balanced heavy drama with a touch of dark comedy, Riff Raff seems to be trying not only for comedy, but for a slightly lighter one based around blended family dynamics, though the feeling that trouble is brewing remains a constant. One of the biggest mistakes that Pollono and director Dito Montiel (Empire State, Critical Thinking) makes is in framing the movie around a flash forward to a scene of violence, and then a voiceover narration from DJ telling the audience how we got there. We then spend the length of the film pondering why the character (who the writer and the director clearly have no handle on and little interest in) is narrating, reaching the conclusion that it’s the only reason he has to be there. While DJ contrasts from the rest of the family for his lack of secrets or a dark past, he is so incidental to the story that there are frequent scenes that he’s not in or privy to — a major screenwriting faux paus when working with a point-of-view narrator — and he has surprisingly little in way of a character arc. He’s merely a hapless observer watching the others self-destruct, which might have worked if he was anywhere near as endearing as the script wants him to be…

The performances are uniformly strong, as Montiel lives up to his reputation as an actor’s director and relies heavily on a strong cast. Harvey is likable as DJ, though the character is an oddity, as if a Diff’rent Strokes-style, early ‘80s sitcom lead wandered into A History of Violence and decided to try to blend in. Harris is terrific, though the script keeps him so distant that we never connect with the character, and while Union may give the most consistently on-point performance, she’s also undercut by an enigmatic role. Pullman, Coolidge and Postacchini bring a lot of energy and presence, yet of the three, only Pullman’s Rocco ever comes close to being more than a one-note stock caricature. The film plays best when focused on Murray and Davidson, who have chemistry to spare and bring a kooky yet deadpan approach to their portrayal of the villains that is really a treat to watch. An extended sequence with P.J. Byrne (The Wolf of Wall Street, A Complete Unknown) and Brooke Dillman (Superbad) as clueless neighbors is a major highlight.

Riff Raff moves at a steady pace and is easy to get through, yet the moment it was over, I found myself asking, “Why did I sit through that?” and “Why was this made?” The answer to those questions is: because that’s what I do, and because the filmmakers were trying to tell an interesting story and failed. It’s too violent to be funny and too tentative to be suspenseful, and as far as the question of why you should bother seeing it in a theater, the answer is a very simple and resounding “don’t.” —Patrick Gibbs

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