Freaky Tales is amazing. That’s what I texted to my friend Sherin after I finished watching this fantabulous piece of work. The film, written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck and inspired by Bay Area legend Too $hort‘s song of the same name, is a jambalaya-like mix of music, comedy, and Bay Area culture into a Pulp Fiction-inspired anthology tale that’s amazingly fun to watch.
Set in 1987 in Oakland, California, Freaky Tales focuses on four distinct stories that overlap in little ways throughout the film. Punks versus Neo-Nazis, a girl Rap duo getting their shot at stardom, a debt collector dealing with the consequences of his past, and an NBA star’s amazing night against the Showtime Lakers.
Boden and Fleck craft a fun story that goes off from the Too $hort song and into some pretty fantastical stories with mysterious green energy as the cause of some of these events. The film also uses fun animation to significant effect. They go full cartoon for some, and with others, nice comic book-like effects in the early parts of the film to excite some scenes.
Some stand-out performances for me are Ji-young Yoo as Tina and Jack Champion as Lucid, who are the main characters for the first characters of the story really set the tone as the punk kids facing off against Neo Nazis will really connect with audiences with how that feels like right now.
Ben Mendelsohn as The Guy is a great bad guy who always eats up the scenery in this. Normani, who plays Entice, a young rapper, does quite well in what I think is her first dramatic acting role. Pedro Pascal, who seems to be in everything constantly, is Clint in the most serious part of the film. He’s his usual great in this. Also, it was good to see Angus Cloud again in this after his passing. He plays a character named Travis, who is quite comical and different from his most famous role of Fezco in Euphoria.
I think the most fun part of the movie and the most absurd part is Jay Ellis as Sleepy Floyd in his section, which goes part John Wick and part Wuxia action film. This movie makes the Golden State Warriors legend into a full-on myth, and it’s fantastic.
The film is also filled with Bay Area cameos, some of which surprised me that they could get them in the movie. I also learned about Sleepy Floyd, an NBA legend who greatly impacted the Warriors. The Warriors, too, have a significant part of the film’s background, which works well with where they were then, as we see this basketball team now and how dominant they’ve become.
The music needle drops fit nicely in each scene as they go from Punk and Hardcore to R&B to even recent rap songs like 40 Water’s Nope (that’s E40 for the squares). I immensely enjoyed this film as it felt like it took chances, and wanted to do something original and honor Oakland. Freaky Tales is a movie I hope many go out to see and check it out however they can this year.
Score: B+
