If this year’s Sleeping With Other People and Addicted to Fresno are to be believed, sex addiction is hilarious. Or, at the very least, the current edgy comedy premise of choice. While that aspect of Leslye Headland’s film was flimsy at best, Jamie Babbit’s attempt aims for something less entrenched in rom-com cliché and more indebted to sibling co-dependency. Judy Greer and Natasha Lyonne play sparring sisters Shannon and Martha. Fresh from a stint in rehab, Shannon is bailed out once again by her younger sister and begins working with her as a hotel maid. When Shannon has sex with the in-house pervert and Martha accidentally kills him, the film devolves into a slapstick caper that goes out of its way to introduce meaningless set pieces.
Written by Babbit’s wife, Karey Dornetto (Portlandia), Addicted to Fresno speeds by at a clip, from wheeling the dead body around town in a blue laundry bin to raising a $25,000 blackmail payout to cremate said dead body at a pet cemetery run by Fred Armisen and Allison Tolman. What started as a sister duo becomes a criminal partnership. Cue an overly drawn-out gag involving a bin full of purple dildos, the spoils from their attempt to rob a sex shop that they then sell to a softball league. When the dildos dry up, Shannon and Martha try the next best thing: stealing a bar mitzvah boy’s birthday money.
In a word, the film is crude. It plays like a rough cut of a character-driven comedy, and its humor sticks to the profane and uncomfortable. From the bar mitzvah boy’s full-on rap to Shannon’s sex addict’s anonymous meetings (featuring an addled Kumail Nanjiani), the script lacks any real grit. And that’s not even mentioning the halfhearted digs at Fresno itself. Inconsistencies in Dornetto’s script multiply when the murder plot meets the obligatory romantic subplots. Shannon carries on a non-committal flirtation with her married therapist (Ron Livingston) by phone and somehow manages to find time to seduce Eric (Malcolm Barrett), a hotel co-worker and amateur poet. The film also opts to use a valuable portion of its 85 minutes to pursue a relationship between Martha and her Krav Maga instructor (Aubrey Plaza). The goal in this instance is to show the over-accommodating sister finally doing something for herself. Unfortunately, these cameos are exactly that, excuses to parade the likes of Plaza and Molly Shannon across the screen, perhaps to give credence to the comedy but actually muddling the central story with glorified sketches.
When given the opportunity, however, Judy Greer embraces the complexity of her role and attempts to infuse the sympathy that the script sorely lacks. Her role as a sex addict is ill-conceived comedic fodder, but there are hints of deep-seated pain. Despite its poor handling, it’s clear that Shannon’s mini-rebellions are all attributable to her addiction. That Dornetto’s script uses Shannon’s sexual encounters for comic relief belies the reality of her condition. The most honest moment comes in an addict’s meeting when Shannon describes how desperately she wants to be rid of these uncontrollable emotions and finally asks for help. Shannon is very much aware of her self-destructive behavior, just incapable of combating it. If this sentiment is conveyed via the line, “I’m just fucking tired of fucking,” keep in mind this is still a comedy.
Bizarrely, the frame of Addicted to Fresno sets Shannon up for a typical indie dramedy reckoning rather than a satisfying resolution between sisters. Her description of the story in the opening scene teases a tale of “how sisters can sink each other,” but it doesn’t even fit how the character might possibly see the events of the film. Post-cremation, Martha and Shannon angrily part ways, and Shannon’s solution is to turn herself in to the police, not out of personal guilt so much as a way to permanently separate herself from the sister who is clearly better off without her. In some ways, it signals minimal character growth, but ultimately it’s a far too serious ending for such a farce as Addicted to Fresno.