NOODLES FOREVER | Omeleto Comedy

A man runs over his daughter's dog.


NOODLES FOREVER is used with permission from McKinley Carlin. Learn more at   / mckinley_carlin  .


Divorced father Phil is headed to his daughter's birthday party at his ex-wife's house. Already off his game, he runs over a wiener dog just as he arrives. When Phil arrives at the party, he realizes the theme is his daughter's beloved new dachshund dog, Noodles -- who he has just run over and concealed in the box that contains her present.

Things only go from bad to worse, especially when he discovers his ex-wife is remarrying her weird meathead boyfriend. Added to the pressure of trying to figure out how to handle Noodle's death, and the party becomes a descent into stress, awkwardness and possibly even madness.

Directed and written by McKinley Carlin, this comedy short begins on a note of both dread and adrenaline, as Phil runs over a dog on the street en route to his daughter's birthday party. But it's a testament to the film's ingenuity and boldness that the "fun" doesn't stop there, with things only going from bad to worse for the single father at the heart of the story. The question framing the film becomes not only how long can Phil keep his secret, but whether or not he'll crack under the weight of an ever-increasing pile of pressures.

The film's comedy doesn't come primarily from zippy one-liners, broad physical hijinks or exaggerated characters. Instead, it achieves a memorable awkwardness from a masterful juggling of tone, which resembles the increasing disassociation of Phil's character as his afternoon goes from bad, to worse, to completely horrible. The collision of the bright, saturated, exaggeratedly cheerful cinematography with the in-your-face framings and the almost Cubist-like sound and score become more surreal and dream-like as Phil confronts one contretemps after another. It's almost as if David Lynch was making a comedy about a man whose world has fallen apart.

The creative discomfort matches the discomfort of the main character as he navigates a difficult emotional situation, particularly when his ex-wife reveals her plans to remarry her terrible, aggressively weird boyfriend. Phil is jealous and hurt, and yet he is also carrying the weight of a horrible secret. Actor Clayton Farris carries this psychological burden with an emotionally honest performance, never losing sight of Phil's stakes and emotions even as everything around him gets weirder and weirder.

Yet everyone reaches a boiling point, letting Phil's horrible secret out of the box and into the open. Spiraling into a highly memorable ending, NOODLES FOREVER ends in an almost operatic crescendo of awkwardness, and then a minor miracle, adding a final surreal flourish to an already distinctive storytelling experience.