A simple joke—something like a witty one-liner—offers up so much information under analysis. When a film has a few such jokes, it makes it plain who the intended audience is. Those who are laughing at the one-liners are probably folks who will enjoy the film and those who remain stone faced are likely not going to have a good time watching the movie. This is very obvious in the first few minutes of She’s Allergic to Cats, a film that is likely to strongly bifurcate viewers. It is an ostensible comedy that cranks out quips throughout its quite short runtime, but these are not jokes that everyone is going to be laughing at; those who are cackling will probably like the other aspects of She’s Allergic to Cats.
The plot of She’s Allergic to Cats reads as something of an incel sexual fantasia with some hijinks surrounding the climax (pun intended). Protagonist Mike Pinkney (Mike Pinkney) is a Los Angeles-based dog groomer and video effects artist who aspires to be a filmmaker. He is bad at all of these things: he consistently messes up his grooming assignments, his video art is self-professedly not worth anyone’s time and his filmmaking endeavor is to make a version of Carrie where all the roles are played by cats in wigs. Some of you are already laughing: you would probably enjoy She’s Allergic to Cats. Mike’s life gets worse as it is described further: he has no friends, his agent has not heard of Carrie, his car is a junker on the cusp of dying and his apartment is infested with rats.
Mike’s world is turned upside down one day when he meets Cora (Sonja Kinski), who for reasons that are not clear even to Mike himself, is attracted to Mike. The only complimentary thing an observer could remark about Mike is that he truly loves dogs and it seems that the only thing that Cora is looking for in a sexual partner is an unabashed and unconditional adoration of domestic canines. But how can he hook up with a knockout in his rat-infested apartment? Easy, he finds a cat—named a-little-to-on-the-nose “Rosemary—to kill the rats. What could go wrong with that choice? Simply refer to the title of the film for the answer to that one.
A straightforward plot summary does not do enough to describe She’s Allergic to Cats. This film about a video effects artist looks like a piece of lo-fi video art. There are constant cuts to neon colors swirling across the screen, text cut from magazines floating in the frame and other video effects liberally scattered throughout. The picture quality overall is poor, made to imitate a video tape’s resolution. For some viewers, this will only heighten their enjoyment of what they will consider an experimental film about an aspiring filmmaker. For others, it will instead exacerbate the level of tedium they feel, because not only is Mike a loser but he is also pretentious about his artistic talent.
She’s Allergic to Cats will elicit sharp opinions in its viewers, who will either love it as a funny and visually stimulating work or loathe it as an absolute shambolic mess that looks like a student film from a teenager in art school.
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