“These are the tales, the freaky tales,” repeatedly intones Oakland rap legend Too $hort over the interstitials of writer and directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “Freaky Tales.” This Bay Area anthology film takes its title from the over nine-minute song, which is itself an extended chronicle of prominent personalities the rapper encounters. While the directing duo occasionally approximates something wild in their headrush of 1987 nostalgia, they do not earn the second line of the rap. That is to say, unlike Too $hort, these tales are not ones that they tell so well.
READ MORE: Sundance 2024: The 23 Most Anticipated Movies To Watch
“Freaky Tales” leans on its chosen format, essentially four short films, to justify any feeling of disjointedness. The stories share a loose connection through overlapping characters (although the Black women who get their own section are conspicuously absent after) and one larger-than-life city of Oakland. A uniting threat of violence, especially from white supremacists of the skinhead and white-collar variety, constantly threatens to poison the melting pot of diverse figures assembled here.
Fleck and Boden’s storytelling device invites internal comparison, so it’s worth noting that the film does pick up some modicum of steam in its back half. Pedro Pascal’s brooding henchman Clint and Jay Ellis’ Golden State Warrior-turned-actual warrior Eric “Sleepy” Floyd fulfill the desire for pulpy action that simmers underneath the initial section. But whatever vitality they inject into the film has the added hurdle of overcoming the fatigue inspired by the first half.
Each of the stories in “Freaky Tales” carries some element of fantasy, even if just the creeping presence of Oakland’s green energy force. But the first two stories, involving young punks (Jack Champion and Ji-young Yoo) fighting their local nazi scum and budding rappers (Normani and Dominique Thorne), maintain a stronger fidelity to reality. These segments feel held back by their aura of personal memory—as if they cannot fully embrace the go-for-broke cinematic energy that later comes to develop the film.
It’s in this enervating opening that Bay Area native Fleck most nakedly demonstrates his hometown pride, stuffing as much local flair and late-’80s ephemera into the frame as possible. Credit to production designer Patty Podesto, the only person in “Freaky Tales” who finds a way to synthesize all these Easter eggs into the frame without overwhelming the viewer. In dealing with everyone else, the overwhelming sensation is one of being yelled at by that friend who won’t shut up about how much they love where they grew up.
Cinematic love letters to hometowns—and movies themselves—are nothing new. They can be done skillfully if the filmmakers provide an invitation into the world that allows people can understand why a source of inspiration provided such a jolt of creative energy. In “Freaky Tales,” Fleck and Boden usher the viewer not to an open door but instead to a window from which they can view the zany events. The team casts the die from the opening crawl, which instantly bisects the audience into those who were there and can probably remember it … and those who must endure the people who mythologize it so forcefully.
For those not up-to-date on the local lore of Oakland, the bludgeoning cinematic references offer some point of entry into the film’s milieu. But as pastiches so often do, these tributes primarily serve as a reminder that someone else has done it first—and usually better. From graphic novel-inspired frames that feel straight out of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” or the cigarette burns to indicate fake reel changes ripped from “Fight Club,” “Freaky Tales” wears its forbearers on its sleeve. However, without a coherently articulated aesthetic or narrative framework to sort them into, each homage feels like little more than a flourish.
On paper, Boden and Fleck seem like poster children for why indie directors should lend their talents to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The team leveled up with billion-dollar grosser “Captain Marvel” and returned to their scrappy roots in “Freaky Tales” with a new set of tools in their arsenal that they could apply on a smaller scale. Yet they re-emerge carrying some of the hallmarks of comic book cinema as well: an overemphasis on in-jokes, a sprawling web of larger-than-life yet flimsy characters, and a belief that a kick-ass fight scene at the end can overwrite many of the wrongs that came before. (At least the great Ben Mendelsohn has been with them through it all.)
What makes Too $ hort’s song “Freaky Tales” an enjoyable listen is its ability to reveal something about the subject by way of the people he encounters. The same does not apply to the film “Freaky Tales,” which shares little more than that quality of inexhaustibility. Bringing to bear the cinephilia of Quentin Tarantino and the perceptive hometown eye of Paul Thomas Anderson means little for an enterprise if it’s as overstuffed and underdeveloped as this. [C-]
Follow along for all our coverage of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.