TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! Riff Raff stars Jennifer Coolidge as a charming but drunk and terrible mother. Ed Harris plays a seemingly upstanding patriarch with a questionable past. Bill Murray and Pete Davidson are gangster partners. These actors inhabiting these characters are worth the price of admission alone. Fortunately, the comedic crime flick has a few other things going for it, including a tight script, twists and turns, surprising violence, and a fair bit of comedy. This makes up for its other shortcomings.
For a time period in the late 1990s/early 2000s, there was a spate of films that tried to rip off Quentin Tarantino. Maybe they had shootouts with a bunch of gangsters, or they amped up style over substance, or they just played with a nonlinear narrative. Though they were derivative and not nearly up to the likes of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, many were at least watchable in their own right, and a few even launched the careers of talented directors. Director Dito Montiel and screenwriter John Pollono have crafted a film that feels like one of those Tarantino imitators. However, a kinder interpretation would be that Tarantino opened new forms of storytelling, of which this is a descendant.
“…Vincent’s estranged son from a former marriage, Rocco…shows up with his pregnant wife and his passed-out mother, Ruth.”
Riff Raff opens with a scene that is at first off-putting in its transparent attempt at manipulation, though the ultimate payoff redeems the initial clunkiness. DJ (Miles J. Harvey), a nerdy, chubby black kid, is holding a gun to the head of Vincent (Ed Harris), and Vincent tells him something to the effect of, “Go ahead, son, shoot.” DJ is narrating and tells us he’s going to take us back to how it all started. Once we go back in time, one of our questions is immediately answered – Vincent has a black son because he is DJ’s stepfather. Still, the other burning question (how a father wants his son to shoot him) becomes even more perplexing because Vincent is seemingly a loving stepfather, and DJ is so nerdy that he doesn’t know his way around a firearm.
Vincent is now married to DJ’s mother, and they are well off enough to have a vacation home in the New England countryside where they celebrate the new year. Their pastoral tranquility is disturbed when Vincent’s estranged son from a former marriage, Rocco (Lewis Pullman), shows up with his pregnant wife, Marina (Emanuela Postacchini), and his passed-out mother, Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge). Before long, we learn that Rocco has crashed the party to lay low while the gangster Lefty (Bill Murray) is trying to hunt him down. In the following days, these two sides of the family — the new, well-to-do, well-educated side and the old-school, rough, and not-so-well-adjusted side — get to know each other, with often disastrous consequences.
"…Tarantino opened new forms of storytelling, of which this is a descendant."
