There’s the sense you’ve entered a full-blown panic attack upon riding up to an apartment with Carter (Nick Darnell) in “Cotton Candy Bubble Gum” where he’s come to pick up his friend Angel (Morgan Jay), the far less responsible of the two who needs to run after someone he’s been seeing on the side can tell there’s another woman from his phone. Carter has a cure for times exactly like this, reaching into his bag for some Dubble Bubble to take out his anxiety on, but it isn’t required just yet in this particular instance when Carter himself doesn’t look stressed, ready to speed off at a moment’s notice as Angel dashes half-naked into his car carrying his clothes, but rather the entire world he’s operating inside of, full of bombastic music, sprightly colors and a relentless pace that it’d be impossible for anyone to keep up with. At first, it seems like writer/director J Pinder wants to induce a sugar coma with the madcap comedy, but instead a second purpose is revealed that smooths out his feature debut into something pure and sweet, a particular surprise when set in the cutthroat music industry.
Perhaps Carter is unfazed by hustling Angel into his car when the day is full of greater challenges ahead when he’s the gofer for Jason (Ben Scattone), a photographer who has promised a full-time gig if he can make it through a shoot with the rapper Capital Gainz (R. Marcus Taylor). The shoot itself wouldn’t appear to be all that demanding, though being around the famous musician and two video vixens named Lisset (Sophia Renee Sherman) and Brooklyn (JadaPaige) can make Carter nervous given his own social anxieties and the lack of them for Angel, who tags along and sees another opportunity to get laid. But things take a turn when Jason asks Carter to help set up a birthday party for his son Nate (Jack Stone) back at his house, with Angel seeing the keys handed to Carter to both Jason’s car and his home a chance to bring back Lisset and Brooklyn for his own fun.
There’s no bag of bubble gum big enough to calm down Carter when things inevitably start going awry, but the origins of his chewing habit start to emerge as he takes a liking to Brooklyn and the film starts slowing down a bit itself to become the enjoyable hangout movie like “Friday” or “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” that it aspires to be. It isn’t just the wild exploits that Carter and Angel find themselves in that remind of the most successful of those comedies, but Pinder’s insistence to inject some heart into the hijinks when Carter first found comfort in the candy from a traumatic experience in his youth and has real incentive to get a full-time position when it could lead to finally seeing himself as an adult, though his version of that isn’t exactly the same as it is in the eyes of others when he seeks to be able to rent out the guest house in his mom’s house as opposed to moving completely out of the nest as she would like. That’s jeopardized by not only Angel’s general disregard for the rules at Jason’s house, but by the discovery of a sex tape involving Capital Gainz that could ideally fetch the thousands on the black market, but ends up only netting them trouble from the rap star who desperately tries to get it back.
As Carter and Angel beg, borrow and steal to stay afloat, it doesn’t appear if Pinder didn’t need to stretch far to imagine the scrappy characters when putting together the production likely took the same resolve. The film makes up for a limited budget with plenty of energy, though the wall-to-wall music can be a bit much and occasionally there’s a tendency to pad out the film’s running time by lingering a little too long on a gag. However, the film’s shaggy charm comes in part from its rough edges when the director has genuinely inspired ideas of how to summon the more surreal parts of Carter’s day, from the teddy bears that inexplicably litter Jason’s car and home coming alive to a drug sequence taking various forms of animation in a genuinely unique way. A cast willing to go-for-broke, led by a disarmingly sincere performance from Darnell, gives the mayhem meaning and as chaotic and outlandish as “Cotton Candy Bubble Gum” can get, there’s a feeling you’re watching people work through some real stuff and Pinder manages to give audiences something to chew on without the film ever losing its flavor.
“Cotton Candy Bubble Gum” does not yet have U.S. distribution. It will next play at Cinequest in San Jose on March 19th at 7 pm at the California Theater.