Release: March 8, 2024
Director: Nicholas Goossen.
Writer: Nicholas Goossen and Esther Provitsky
Starring: Esther Provitsky as June, Bobby Lee as Bill, Beverly D’Angelo as Marla, James Remar as Arnold, Haley Joel Osment as Davey
Running Time: 91 minutes
Comedy as a cinematic genre seems to be in something of a bad place right now. As the pursuit of laughter has been replaced by the pursuit of so-called “clapter” and rhetorical head pats from the right people, comedy has become obsessed with the asinine idea of “punching up” and not provoking the offense of favoured grievance groups. As a result, comedy as a cinema genre has found itself in this place of vacillating between preachy and warmed over, dull mediocrity that doesn’t dare offend anyone by having a punchline that might make someone, somewhere, at sometime head for the fainting couch. I haven’t enjoyed much in the comedy genre the last several years, but I enjoy money. So, let’s take a look at this comedy picture, Drugstore June.
The film finds its titular protagonist working, where else, at a pharmacy. June is a cashier who is woefully incompetent at her job, and whose off-putting personality grates on the nerves of most customers. When she is not being woefully incompetent at her place of employment, she is at the family home debasing herself on the internet as a niche online micro celebrity. In her free time, she obsesses over her ex boyfriend – with whom she broke up some considerable length of time before the events of the film – to the point of stalking. When someone burglarizes and ransacks her place of employment, stealing a large quantity of prescription drugs and – to June’s utter horror – melting an entire cooler’s worth of ice cream, she decides to take up a little unlicensed private eye work by investigating the crime herself.
Written by Nicholas Goossen and comedienne Esther Provitsky, the film is directed by Goossen and stars Provitsky as the titular June. Drugstore June is a sort of post-millennial hard boiled crime picture juiced on Ritalin and Gen Y self-obsession. The character of June is a narcissistic, self-obsessed millennial who believes that the entire world of her small town pivots around her. In June’s mind, everyone’s preeminent concern is June. Her self-obsession runs so deep that even her turn as a narcissistic millennial Sam Spade with an XX chromosome is not birthed from any concern for her long-suffering employer who inexplicably tolerates June’s gross incompetence and inappropriate off-putting behaviour. Rather, it is born of June’s unshakeable belief that her ex boyfriend, who has long since moved on, did it to get her attention.
As story is concerned, Drugstore June is a fairly standard-issue hard boiled crime parody. Wherein an inept, bumbling individual finds him or herself stumbling on his or her own feet down a rabbit hole investigating some wrongdoing and, through sheer dumb luck and lack of good sense, managing to get to the bottom of things. It definitely will not win any accolades for uniqueness in that department. Where the flick excels is in using its main character as a vehicle to lampoon the rampant narcissism of the late Millennial and early Generation Z/”Zoomer” cohorts. Chances are that we all know at least one person who is not entirely unlike June. That sad, pathetic girl or guy that just can not, or will not, grow up and take responsibility. The one that is so addicted to drama that if there is none going on, she/he has to create it. The perpetual victim, ever put-upon by “oppressive” parents, friends, and really the world as a whole. The person whose ever thought and opinion is so singularly unique and visionary that he/she just has to broadcast it for the whole world to see. Pursuant to that, I found the character of June and her interactions with the various other characters to be rather darkly humorous. Overall, Drugstore June was a serviceable and entertaining crime parody that offered at least a few laughs, particularly in its satire of modern woke narcissists. And, hey, it’s a comedy that is actually trying to be funny and provoke laughter instead of head-pats and belly rubs. That has to be good for something.
Score: 7/10