Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Paddleton’ On Netflix, Where Mark Duplass and Ray Romano Have A Unique Male Friendship

End of life issues haven’t been explored a whole lot in movies, mainly because assisted suicide hasn’t been legal until recently — and now, it’s only legal in a few states. But also it’s likely been hard to crack making a movie about such issues anything but maudlin. However, it seems like Mark Duplass has been able to crack it, as well as crack the issue of close friendships between heterosexual males, in the new film Paddleton. Read on for more information…

PADDLETON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Michael (Mark Duplass) and Andy (Ray Romano) are two scruffy single guys who have been buddies since Michael moved into the apartment downstairs from Andy. They hang out together all the time, making pizzas and watching martial arts movies, including Death Punch, which is their favorite. They also play a game called “Paddleton”, where they hit a ball against the back of an abandoned drive-in screen and see who can get the ball into a strategically-placed oil drum.

But at the beginning of the film, Michael finds out from his doctor (Christine Woods) that he has terminal cancer, and not much can be done to treat it. He decides that he wants to end his life before he gets too sick to have any control over it, and he wants Andy to help. Andy is reluctant; he thinks his buddy can fight it. But, seeing how steadfast Michael is about it, he agrees to help. This means taking an hours-long drive to one of the few pharmacies that offer the drug combination that will do the deed.

The two of them continue to do their thing, until Michael gets too sick to play Paddleton, then he starts to feel the decline happening. When he finally decides that it’s time, the two of them bond even more deeply, talking about their friendship, discussing how Michael can contact Andy if in fact there’s “an after situation.”.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Not really sure if Paddleton really reminds us of any other movie. It has some of the elements of Duplass’s “mumblecore” movies, like Safety Not Guaranteed, but with a more mature vibe. And there are buddy movies that have unusually close male friendships, but there’s something different about Andy and Michael that we can’t quite put our finger on. Add to that the idea of assisted suicide, and the number of analogous films dwindles down to zero.

Performance Worth Watching: Ray Romano has to carry more of the dramatic load as Andy, because he’s Michael’s caretaker, having to go through all the emotions of losing his best friend, as well as his doubts about having tho help Michael end his life. Romano does such a good job of showing all of those emotions, while still playing a guy that’s funny in a sad-sacky way.

Memorable Dialogue: As the two of them break capsules to create the cocktail of Michael’s fatal dose, Michael looks at the Hangman puzzle on his favorite shirt, one that Andy made for him, and says “We’ve got to deal with this. It’s now or never.” Andy admits that the puzzle has no solution. “Whenever we finish a puzzle, you get a little sad,” Andy says. “You don’t see it, but I see it. We go ‘we got it!’, but you’re sad. You know what? ‘He’ll never get it. He’ll never get this shirt. It’ll be his favorite shirt.'”

Single Best Shot: After Andy mixes the cocktail with Michael’s fatal dose he grabs a paper towel and dabs his eyes, pushing back the sadness only so much.

Sex and Skin: When the two guys stay over in the town where they get the end-of-life drug combo, they get in a hot tub, and the owner of the hotel (Dendrie Taylor) gets in with them, talking to them about how she feels her late husband all the time. She also takes a bit of a shine to Andy.

Our Take: One of the things that we had to get past when watching Paddleton, directed by Alex Lehmann and co-written by Duplass and Lehmann, is how scruffy and — let’s get real — creepy looking Andy and Michael are. They love their sweatshirts and cargo shorts; Andy wears a toque to make him look even schlubbier, and Michael has a salt-and-pepper porn ‘stache for the ages. It feels like Lehmann and Duplass wanted to contrast the two men’s everyday looks (which, in the capsule-breaking scene, they talk about… “I thought you were weird,” Andy tells Michael about when he first moved to the building) with the beautiful friendship the two of them have developed.

Well, mission accomplished. Once you get to the heart of their friendship, you realize that the guys aren’t weird loners at all; they have each other. It’s about as romantic a relationship two heterosexual men can get into with each other, and it does exist in the world; you just usually don’t see such a relationship between two men who are in their 40s and 50s, as Andy and Michael are. But still, it works, and that’s in no small part because of the performances of Duplass and Romano, whose chemistry shows the love the two of them have for each other.

That chemistry is also seen in the mostly-improvised dialogue between the two, and in a scene where Michael grabs the opportunity to start reciting dialogue from Death Punch during a karaoke night at the hotel bar they’re in. At first, the thinks he’s on his own, then Andy jumps in, and the two replay the scene with such enthusiasm, that it really showed us the true depth of their friendship.

Most heartbreaking, of course, is also the most squeamishly uncomfortable scene, after Michael takes his fatal dose and while he waits to fall asleep for the last time. As Romano told us, he felt real emotions during that scene, and it comes through in the best scene of his acting career.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Paddletonis a pretty quiet and simple movie, but you’ll get sucked in by Andy and Michael’s friendship, and the literally life-and-death the two choices have to make.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Paddleton on Netflix