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August 19, 2014

Movie Review: See You Next Tuesday (2013)

Directed by Drew Tobia

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Declared “The Most Effectively Offensive Film” of the 2013 Boston Underground Film Festival, See You Next Tuesday takes no prisoners. Described as a film that “the whole family can enjoy cutting themselves to,” there are plentiful laughs to be found here, just be warned that it has several sights and sounds that shocked this most seasoned reviewer …

Mona (Eleanore Pienta) is a verging-on-psychotic check-out girl at a Brooklyn market. Days away from giving birth – no word on the father or medical treatment, as Mona hates those doctors putting their fingers in her vagina, she stumbles from her colorless job to her shithole apartment in a daze. Put upon by her ghetto fabulous coworkers, Mona turns to her immediate family for solace. There’s her mother May (Dana Eskelson), a selfish, verbally abusive woman who lives for her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and the gossip opportunities it brings.



There’s also Mona’s lesbian sister Jordan (Molly Plunk). While both engage in years-too-old sibling rivalry, the free and rebellious Jordan mirrors the socially inept Mona in myriad ways. While Mona wears a hideous orange coat seemingly pulled from a Dumpster, Jordan likewise sports garish, ill-matched fashions in order to solidify her hipster status. While Mona says inappropriate things, Jordan blurts out vulgar things such as “I love my nigger girlfriend!” in a bid to be “earthy” and “re-al.” Making her African-American girlfriend’s Sylve (Keisha Zollar) life a living hell, both Jordan and Mama May offer proof that “apples fall from apple trees.”

In the space of 24 hours, Mona is fired from her job during a violent altercation and is evicted from her apartment. Turning to Jordan, Mona invites herself to a pretentious, artsy party that evening and the story briefly crosses over into horror territory as the audience fears what Mona will do next: chugging straight whiskey while on the verge of delivery, Mona openly tries to start fights with total strangers and one brac-es for the worst. Never fear, as the film ends on a note of familial love – as yet another member of this most dysfunctional family is set to enter the world. 

Savvy film fans will be hip to See You Next Tuesday’s title. See You Next Wednesday is the name of a nonexist-ent film used by director John Landis as a cackling in-joke throughout his oeuvre: See You Next Wednesday is the name of the title of the pornographic film the characters see in An American Werewolf in London (1981), and is referenced in his “Thriller” music video for Michael Jackson. See You Next Tuesday recalls the early films of John Waters, where supremely dysfunctional family units commit random acts of sociopathy, but make no mistake: all of the characters pay a very heavy price for their transgressions.

Ably portrayed by a cast of seasoned actors – Pienta is probably tired of being compared to Uma Thurman, See You Next Tuesday is available as VOD this August 26th. You can visit the film’s official Web site by going right here --

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