***/****
starring Michael Covino, Kyle Marvin, Gayle Rankin, George Wendt
written by Kyle Marvin & Michael Covino
directed by Michael Covino
by Walter Chaw Michael Covino's The Climb paints a portrait of male friendship through a series of clever, tightly-scripted vignettes that depict the buddies in question at several points in their lives. It opens with Mike (director and co-writer Covino) and Kyle (co-writer Kyle Marvin) riding a bike up a steep grade–the perfect opportunity for Mike to confess to the less-in-shape Kyle that he's had an affair with Kyle's fiancée. It's a funny conceit carried by Mike and Kyle's rapport: Kyle, furious, can't quite catch up with Mike to kill him; Mike admitting that was the plan all along. The film then jumps forward to a funeral, a Christmas party (where Kyle's mom (Talia Balsam) says everything except what she means when recruiting a drunken Mike into her plan to separate her kid from the woman, Marissa (Gayle Rankin), whom everyone hates), a wedding, and so on, until finally lands it at a place where it becomes clear that despite the ever-changing circumstances of their lives, Mike and Kyle's friendship, like all good friendships, stayed exactly the same.
Covino and Marvin rely on long monologues broken up by visual gags like Kyle veering off course when he gets the news of the infidelity, or Mike realizing almost too late that Kyle is no longer following him in a wintry setting. The timing is everything and these actors nail it. Mike gives off a Casey Affleck vibe to Kyle's lanky John C. Reilly; I like them together. Their relationship feels lived-in and provides some connective tissue the film doesn't otherwise. I do wish more time had been spent on what it is exactly that has made and kept them friends. At a fleet 90 minutes, The Climb is concentrated with gags. Expertly-executed gags, don't get me wrong, but Mike and Kyle are interesting enough that I wanted more substance to them, I guess, than straight man vs. gadfly. Mike says at one point that Kyle is a "beautiful man" and refers to him as the kindest person he knows. I wanted more evidence of it–his tolerance of bad behaviour, Mike's and Marissa's, is really the only proof, so he seems more doormat than nice guy. A coda where Kyle reveals a side of himself that's frightened and tentative opens the door for a larger conversation about him, and what I think is meant to be a moment of emotional uplift–when a kid learns to ride a bike without training wheels–doesn't land with any meaningful impact in the absence of it. This last-minute tonal shift is the only major miscalculation of the piece, but it's one that highlights how essentially lightweight it all is and maybe didn't have to be. I loved watching The Climb, though. I can't wait for the filmmakers' next time at bat.
