Episode 2 – We Would Love You to Be Our Plus One

Several critics have described Plus One as this generation’s “When Harry Met Sally,” starring Meg Ryan. Jack Quaid, the leading man, is Meg Ryan’s son.

Source: IMDB.com

Today Mike and Christi fawn over the film Plus One, this generations romantic comedy. It is a little more raunchy and a little more rowdy.  Two friends who are tired of attending their friend’s wedding agree to be each other’s Plus One. Alice (Maya Erskine) and Ben (Jack Quaid) are forced to rehearse toasts, purchase gifts and pay for hotel rooms as all of their friends are getting married. Their relationship throughout the ten weddings change to more than just friends. We also include our our regular features like: Mike’s pick up line, the smoochie and pause count and a rundown of the numbers.

“And she(Alice) really plays up kind of this role of being the manic pixie frat guy in this film. And I think there’s a commitment and earnestness that makes this character work, even though it’s kind of like your drunken buddy in college, except they’re out of college and they probably should start getting their lives under control by now” – Mike Dodge

We cover the aspects of Plus One like:

• How the traditional gender roles are flipped
• The use of handheld and why it is annoying sometimes
• Why blurry twinkle lights in the background makes every shot beautiful
• The way that their characters change over the course of Plus One.
• The use of location to reduce the budget that benefits independent filmmakers
• More show-don’t-tell techniques
• The use of costuming to convey character growth

Next Weeks Film: Blue Jay on Netflix

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Brennan 0:00
You’re listening to Dodge Movie Podcast. Your hosts are Christi and Mike Dodge, the founders of Dodge Media Productions. We produce films and podcasts, so this is a podcast about films. Join them as they share their passion for filmmaking.

Mike Dodge 0:19
Howdy everybody, you might be expecting to hear us talk about a movie called Blue Jay. Turns out we’re not going to do that. We’re going to talk about a movie called Plus One, not just to mess with you, but because we’re still kind of getting our sea legs and one thing led to another and we have a programming change. This movie is a little bit lighter hearted, a little bit campier, maybe even a little naughty humor in there. So be prepared, save your tissues for next week.

Christi Dodge 0:44
Today we’re going to review a film called Plus One and one of the things that I love about Mike is his ability to kind of-I don’t know how he does it-trolls the internet, scans IMDB, gets them beaconed into his brain somehow, but he finds the coolest indie films, and we have had a lot of great experiences watching the films he finds. And this is one of them. Let’s see. I think we did it came out June 14 of 2019. It stars Maya Erskine who was in Pen15. And if you were 15 once, I-I suggest youo check it out, it’s on Hulu.

Jack Quaid, who happens to be Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan’s son isn’t it, and it stars Ed Begley Jr. It was written and directed by Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer. So let’s just jump in. And we’re going to start with Mike’s pickup line where he shares with us the first line and tells us a little bit about the film.

Mike Dodge 1:38
Plus One opens with the line from Jack Quaid’s character, “this is going to be tough,” and that I think sets up kind of the whole arc of the film, right, this is gonna be a tough ride for those two characters. So the premise of Plus One is that they are longtime friends who have a bunch of weddings to get through. And as single people, this is kind of depressing for them, they feel left out, they feel ostracized, etc. So they’re gonna rely on each other to help them get through this.

That’s kind of the inciting incident is we find out about 10 minutes into Plus One that they have 10 weddings to go to. That gives us as a viewer a little bit of a progress bar so we can kind of see where we’re at in the whole process. And then we get to this line where he says, “this is going to be so much worse if we do it alone.”

So that is the narrative question, right? Are they going to be alone through Plus One, as an aside is kind of a fun gag throughout the film, that there are speeches that are given at each of the 10 different films, and we see a wide gamut of things. In fact, one of the characters says that, I think it’s the Alice character, she says, “wedding speeches are just supposed to be funny.” And so we see a wide gamut of that in there. We have the guy who cries, or the guy who refuses to hold the microphone next, where he’s talking. And we see some funny ones, we see-

Christi Dodge 3:02
Painful ones.

Mike Dodge 3:04
-one in a foreign language yet still funny. So I think that’s a fine recurring bit. As the viewer, you know, this is coming. And each time you go to a new wedding, you learn that you’re going to have this gag, where it’s going to be a speech, and that’s how they’re going to kind of introduce the different things that goes through that wedding. This movie is also romantic comedy, but it is kind of a little bit different in that the classical formulation, a la Billy Mernit of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which we originally kind of see in Garden State. That’s where he coined it, I believe, is kind of flipped on its head because my plays this character Alice, who is not really a dream girl and so I call her a Manic Pixie Frat Guy.

Christi Dodge 3:46
Oh, that’s perfect. Because I wrote down she’s a female Zach Galifianakis.

Mike Dodge 3:51
Yeah, there’s a lot of drinking.

Christi Dodge 3:53
She’s sloppy-

Mike Dodge 3:54
-sloppy, not for emetophobes, she vomits 11 minutes into Plus One. She uses inappropriate language, she lies, she is pretty much she’s-

Christi Dodge 4:05
She’s a hot mess.

Mike Dodge 4:06
She’s a hot mess. She’s the antithesis of somebody that you meet at the top of the Empire State Building. And yet, this kind of works. And so Jack Quaid’s character of Ben is that uptight guy that we often see. He needs her wildness, to break him out of his mold, to get him to relax a little bit to kind of open up. So I think the casting and this worked really well.

I don’t know when they film this, but this is kind of coming off of his role of Hughie, on The Boys where he also plays kind of an uptight character. So I think he plays this well, there’s a line where a woman says that he’s very good looking. And so normally, you would think in terms of romantic comedy that the leads, of course would be really attractive.

So we then as if you’re left wondering, “Well, if he’s so good looking, why is she still alone?” Right. Then Maya is hilarious in this role we saw in Pen15 that she’s got great comedic timing and great instincts. She really plays up kind of this role of being the Manic Pixie Frat Guy in this film. And I think there’s a commitment and earnestness that makes this character work, even though it’s kind of like your drunken buddy in college, except they’re out of college, and they probably should start getting their lives under control by now. And so throughout this film, we see their relationship is the central relationship of Plus One, we see some different things going on. But fundamentally, what we’re looking at is that narrative question will they be alone,

Christi Dodge 5:36
One of the things that I loved is-so early on, she’s this hot mess. He’s kind of trying to, he’s starting to grow up, they’re both post college, they’re getting their jobs and their careers, and all of their friends are settling down and having kids and throughout the course of the movie, they kind of flip personalities, she starts dressing a little bit classier, and kind of, I think, behaving a little bit more grown up.

He is kind of spiraling out of control because of his father played by Ed Begley Jr. and what what he’s going through and going and doing and-and he starts to spin out of control a little bit and kind of almost regress. And the opening wedding, Maya has some ill behavior. And Ben exhibits almost identical behavior at a wedding later in the film, as he’s kind of spiraling out of control.

Mike Dodge 6:28
And that goes so much so that enact one, when Alice gets drunk and embarrassing herself on the dance floor, she goes back to the hotel room is eating pizza and watching Bones on the television, and then near the enact to when Ben’s character does the same thing, he gets drunk and embarrassed himself on the dance floor, he ends up also in the hotel room, eating pizza and watching television in the hotel room. So I thought that was a nice way to show us in the audience that the two of them had flipped roles, right. And so that shows kind of, I think, a part of the characters changing right their arc over time.

And so that was interesting, because the the Alice character doesn’t have as much of really a, an obvious change in her behavior, because she just kind of grows up. Whereas the Ben character, I think we do see him building relationships and treating other people much better than and so that’s just kind of maybe part of the the way the story worked out. But they both I think, bring really likable humanity today to the roles I believe them in those roles.

Christi Dodge 7:37
Yeah, and there were some moments I wrote down that felt like they could have even been improv’d. The scene I’m thinking of specifically is they’re at a wedding, or I think they’re in a reception, and they’re talking to a gay-gay male couple. And I, I’m sure this is a pretty low budget movie. So they probably had some of their friends in it. And it just felt very improv like, they were teasing one another, and the banter was going back and forth. It felt very authentic, like these people probably shoot the shit and do this kind of stuff, you know, off camera.

Mike Dodge 8:09
Yeah, I believe that the writers directors are really somehow worked with Maya, and they know her from other things it seems like, and then her co creator from Pen15 also has a role in Plus One at one of the weddings. So yeah, this did feel like one of those films where we want to make this film or asking the people that we know our context to help us out with it. I also thought a fun bit from all these different weddings was near the end of the film, they have a fight in the photo booth. So while they’re fighting, the flashes going off, and they’re mugging on cue to try to make the good photos even though they’re having this fight.

Christi Dodge 8:48
Right. That’s right. So on to cinematography. The one thing I noticed was, thank you Dustin Morrow for cueing me into why handheld is so annoying. There’s a lot of handheld in Plus One.

Mike Dodge 9:00
Yeah, there is this maybe would be excused by saying it’s a low budget, but I actually don’t think that’s an excuse. But it’s possible that that was kind of the vibe that they were going for some of the independent films use more handheld,

Christi Dodge 9:15
Well, and the characters a little unhinged. They’re a little shaky grasp on life.

Mike Dodge 9:20
Yeah, one could say that it doesn’t work for me. I prefer to have the camera on sticks and let the actor tell us that the character is is shaky, but as possible. You also look at locations right as you know, when filming depending on the location, it can be hard to get sticks in there. The one thing I thought of is they shoot in the elevator at one of the weddings and elevators great location (someone should make a film in that) but one thing that bumped me was why is the lighting blue in that elevator?

Christi Dodge 9:50
Mammut blue.

Mike Dodge 9:51
Yeah. So and then the doors opened and the lights outside were-

Christi Dodge 9:56
Normal.

Mike Dodge 9:56
-well I thought they were even tending toward tungsten or even a sodium light like at a hotel or something. So it was just, it really was strikingly different. And that could be as simple as they got there at that location. And some stoner had put blue gels up and they didn’t have the time to fix it.

Christi Dodge 10:12
Like it was a freight elevator. And so who cares about the lights in a freight elevator? Because Because as we know, filming in a real elevator can be quite tricky. So it’s possible it was a freight elevator.

Mike Dodge 10:23
Yeah, freight elevators are bigger than standard passenger elevator is four feet by six feet, which is really tough to get two actors in there and a camera crew. So it’s possible it’s a freight elevator. And that would certainly lend to trying to squeeze people into the corners and not setting up tripods and stuff like that.

Christi Dodge 10:39
So as far as the editing, the one thing I noted was, I thought it was kind of a sweet touch before we see Jack and Alice are no sorry, not Jack, Ben and Alice, in the hotel room, they open with what appears to be actual real wedding toasts.

Mike Dodge 10:58
Yeah, it to me it very much felt like they were real wedding toasts again, I figure it’s people that the filmmakers knew, yeah, that they got permission to use.

Christi Dodge 11:07
Yes, if you’d like your, you know, four seconds of your wedding in a movie, call us let us know.

Mike Dodge 11:15
Yeah, you could get quite a few submissions there. So maybe they just kept a difference in family invite only an editing thing that I really liked is near the end of Plus One, there’s a montage of cute scenes from throughout the earlier parts of the film from their relationship and picking out the nice parts, even though there had been some parts of course, where they hit rocky roads, because this is going to be tough.

Christi Dodge 11:38
That was good. The set I mean, who my husband is taught me this weddings at night with twinkle lights blurred in the background. Could you have more beautiful setting for Plus One?

Mike Dodge 11:50
Yeah, they had some great locations where they had the strings of the Edison lights, really gorgeous lighting. Obviously, tungsten lighting makes everyone look their very, very best looks gorgeous. So that was nice. I also liked how they had for the, their two apartments, they look pretty crappy. They look like something that I lived in when I was their age. And I appreciated that. Because to me, sometimes these characters have these gorgeous studio apartments and you think how can they afford that. But in this case, it looked like a really crappy apartment that you live in. We hear that age.

That was I thought it was a nice touch on the locations, obviously 10 weddings, bunch of different locations. If you’re clever, you could use something for something. So we know from the trivia that they used a hotel in Malibu for the hotel Hawaii, because that’s obviously much cheaper. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the golf course scenes were shot at that same resort, right? And things like that. I mean, this is what I love about independent filmmaking, right? Is you have to be kind of clever about how you do these kinds of things. And the secret is that filmmakers lie all the time, right? We will shoot three rooms in the same house and make them look like they’re in three different countries. Right? That’s I mean, but that’s part of the the movie magic, right? Or the business of show, right?

Christi Dodge 13:05
Absolutely. And speaking of that I loved when we learned that her boyfriends left her and when she comes back from the first wedding in that show, don’t tell feign that is great filmmaking. The TV mounting bracket is on the wall but the TV’s gone so like he left Yeah, her boyfriend left, took the TV but didn’t want to take the thing so it just it’s so sad. It’s like worse than your boyfriend taking your TV. He leaves you the empty mounting bracket.

Mike Dodge 13:31
Right just really rubbing it in.

Christi Dodge 13:32
Yeah. And then there’s boxes and you know obviously he’s-but it’s like half his like somebody’s half moved out which is what happened, but it’s just that extra knife in the heart to to Alice that her boyfriend left. I thought that was good. So I mentioned how her wardrobe got classier was there any other costuming things that you noticed.

Mike Dodge 13:53
one thing that I noticed she was wearing the same shoes throughout like the first few weddings. So it’s after the first wedding I think she comes back and she’s wearing like a tank top and Daisy Dukes and then these silver shoes that she couldn’t even, like manage to get a second pair of shoes. Right? That’s how how completely ridiculous she is.

Christi Dodge 14:15
I was just gonna say and they talked about they referenced it going to all these weddings is really expensive because you got to get the hotel room, and we find out later how Maya saves money on gifts or not buying gifts.

Mike Dodge 14:29
So from a production standpoint and costuming the thing that just caused me to cringe was there’s a scene where Ben and Alice and probably at least half dozen other actors jump into the swimming pool in their costumes. So additional obviously we could you know, skip lav-ing them so we could save the mics in that way, loop it later something but just those costumes like oh my gosh, chlorine is horrible on clothes and those poor people in the costume department, that was “you get one take we’re not going to deal with this again.

Christi Dodge 15:01
Although they would have had to have the cameras set up, I was gonna say I bet the actors just, you know what-I bet you that was the last shot of the movie

Mike Dodge 15:08
It very well could have been. But the good news is that they could put Ben and Alice in different clothing. So if that outfit was ruined, they can put them in something different further meaning shots, there is a road trip montage at about 15 minutes into the film Love me some road trips and some montage. That was good to see. elevator scene count of one. They had a shot in the elevator. Now that I’m aware of it, I see a lot of elevator shots and fun trivia fact is Jack Quaid’s mother is Meg Ryan, who is in Sleepless in Seattle, which we reviewed in the previous episode.

Christi Dodge 15:45
And as you bring that up, I read the trivia that several critics have described this film as this generation’s When Harry Met Sally.

Mike Dodge 15:52
And I could definitely see that because they have kind of a contentious relationship at the beginning of Plus One, and then they wrap back around, except that the roles are kind of reversed in that Jack Quaid’s playing of Ben is more of the uptight character. And so Maya’s Alice is more the Billy Crystal kind of character. So that’s a nice gender swap, in a sense there to reverse those roles.

Christi Dodge 16:16
So is there anything else? Any other miscellaneous tidbits? Are you ready to go to the numbers? I couldn’t find the budget for this, but it was probably obviously a low budget film, but really well done. I thought at times, some of the group seen some of the weddings, I thought, wow, that’s I mean, weddings are expensive, and they had to put on 10 of them, you know, or have the appearance, but still, there’s some money there. It appeared on Hulu.

There are no domestic numbers, but worldwide, Plus One made $44,000, which didn’t go in theaters very well, man, I’d love for one of our movies to make $44,000. But I know for them, that was probably a little tough. Interestingly enough, Ben Stiller was executive producer, it was about an hour and 38 minutes. It’s IMDb score is 6.6. And I’d made it a little bit higher, I’d say like seven, seven and a half.

Mike Dodge 17:03
Oh, I agree even higher that I really liked Plus One. That’s why we’re reviewing it.

Christi Dodge 17:07
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. There was only one pause. That was to have a personal DMP production meeting about how to shoot a driving scene because we have a film that Mike’s working on the script, and we’re hoping to put a driving scene in it. And so there was one pause. That takes me to Mike’s driving review.

Mike Dodge 17:27
Yeah, the driving review really comes down to he drives a Prius, which is just no fun. That shows him as kind of a tech startup guy who’s really uptight. So that was there’s not a lot of fun there. But I do give credit to the character of Ben because even when he has a carload full of 60 year old stone people, he’s operating the motor vehicle in a safe fashion and doesn’t like his father climbing in the back seat. Maybe a little bit more points if he’d pulled over for the passenger to switch seats, but I think in general did pretty well.

Christi Dodge 18:03
Nice. And this soochy count Mike?

Mike Dodge 18:05
(as a sound effect) Smoochy smoochy, smoochy!

Smoochy count, we have our first smoochy smoochy smoochy at 46 minutes in, we have a few more later in Plus One, but that’s our first smoochy between the two characters, which by the way, is followed a little bit later by my favorite line from the movie: “cooters out.”

Christi Dodge 18:24
That’s a fun scene for all you over eighteen.

Mike Dodge 18:27
Look forward to it.

Christi Dodge 18:28
Any head trauma?

Mike Dodge 18:29
So there’s almost head trauma, I don’t quite count it. There’s a scene where Alice shoves been out of a seat in a party bus while it’s moving, so couldn’t quite see whether his head contacted anything but I’ll count that as an almost head trauma.

Well, that wraps it up for today. Don’t forget to do your homework and watch Blue Jay and join us again next week. Dodges never stop, and neither do the movies.

Brennan 18:53
Thanks for listening to Dodge Movie Podcast with Christi and Mike Dodge of Dodge Media Productions. To find out more about this podcast and what we do, go to dodgemediaproductions.com Subscribe, share, leave a comment and tell us what we should watch next. Dodge never stop, and neither do the movies.