'How to Deter a Robber' - Movie Review

This is a low budget movie made in several cabins in some anonymous cottage country. Wikipedia refers to it as a "crime comedy." It did reasonably well with critics (70% on Rotten Tomatoes as of 2022-08-22).

Madison (Vanessa Marano) and her very goofy boyfriend Jimmy (Benjamin Papac) are annoyed with Madison's mother and family during Christmas dinner and let themselves into a neighbouring cottage where they get drunk and stoned and fall asleep. In the morning, they find the cottage has been robbed and call the cops, who blame them and insist that they not leave the neighbourhood - so the pair end up staying with "Uncle Andy" (Chris Mulkey). But the robbers are still active and break into Uncle Andy's place.

Everybody is a bit goofy - except Andy, who's reasonably sane, and Jimmy who's off-the-charts goofy. He's a nice, well-meaning guy, and he's not actually stupid, but under the slightest threat of danger his panic response is always the worst possible choice. The burglars are at best semi-competent, and the resulting home invasion stand-off goes spectacularly sideways. And is of course played for laughs.

I've often reviewed horror-comedy movies and got a good laugh out of watching people die horribly. But in those movies, the action was so far removed from reality that it would have been very hard to take it seriously. While this movie plays pretty much everything for laughs, everyone's ineptitude felt almost real. So when we get to the punchline, I'm kind of thinking "Americans think this kind of gun violence is funny?!" Which is staggeringly hypocritical, but ... I still think there's something wrong with American society. And this movie wasn't quite funny enough to support its own violent/comedy punchline.