AFF '25 Digests: You’re Dating a Narcissist! And Tuesday’s Flu

You’re Dating a Narcissist!

Of all the ways a movie can stick in the memory, being wildly uneven is one of the more fascinating. Ann Marie Allison’s You’re Dating a Narcissist!, co-written with Jenna Milly, gets off to a rough start, rallies once it has laid out its players and stakes, and whiplashes between being an  effective and affecting exploration of parenting after your children reach adulthood at its best and too-broad and surprisingly poorly made at its worst. 

Marisa Tomei is Judy, a psychiatrist who’s built a career on teaching her patients, readers and students how to identify when they’re in a destructive relationship with someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Judy’s good at what she does, a good friend to fellow professor Diane (Sherry Cola), and a good mother to her daughter Eva (Ciara Bravo), a talented artist. The trouble arises when Eva meets and is swiftly charmed by the dashing doctor Theo (Marco Pigossi) after he saves her from a traffic collision. Theo is, at first glance, a dream man: interested in what interests his partners, close to his extended family, handsome and wealthy. Judy, however, only sees red flags. Theo’s interested in Eva’s interests because it means she’ll pay attention to him; his extended family mollycoddle and indulge him; he knows that he’s handsome and uses the fact to puff up his ego; and his wealth insulates him from any consequences. 

Convinced that her daughter is dating a narcissist, Judy heads for California, bringing Diane along for the trip to help her get away from her narcissistic, emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend. The trouble is that while Judy is great at helping people get clear of narcissistic partners in a professional capacity and even as a friend, her desire to spare Eva from the same heartache that she experienced while married to Eva’s awful father turns her heavy-handed, self-centered and thoughtless. If Judy wants to be there for her daughter, she needs to figure out how to stop making things about herself and start prioritizing Eva’s desires and needs.

When You’re Dating a Narcissist! clicks, it’s funny and dramatically effective. Tomei has excellent chemistry with Cola and Bravo. Allison and Milly’s script does fine work capturing the awkward balance parents have to strike between wanting to protect their kids and letting them be their own people, mistakes and all. Some of cinematographer Martim Vian’s shot compositions are gorgeous, especially late in the film. 

Unfortunately, You’re Dating a Narcissist! is stymied by its uneven craft. Vian’s cinematography bounces between beautiful and lifeless. Some of the sound design is so poor that it sounds outright unfinished. Allison and Milly’s good character work is undercut by the awkward story structure they deploy, opening on a flash-forward so broad and over-the-top that it does not fit with the lower key of the film proper. The film’s failures are fascinating, in large part because they’re so at odds with its successes. This is especially true for You’re Dating a Narcissist’s craft and technical issues, where the gulf between its good and bad elements is so wide that they feel like they come from different films. There is charm here, and Tomei’s always worth watching, but it’s a bumpy ride whose stumbles undo it.

Tuesday’s Flu

Gena Radcliffe, an excellent culture writer and co-host of the long running horror film history/discussion podcast Kill by Kill, has a phrase she’s fond of for films that competently exist: “It’s Fine.” That’s Daniel Roebuck’s Tuesday’s Flu, a well-acted crime story and character study that never rises above “ok.” It’s likable enough, but disappointingly flat for a contemporary crime story whose MacGuffin is literally pirate doubloons swiped from the ocean floor by a rogue explorer who owned his own diving bell.

Ross Marquand is Jason, a gambling addict in recovery and bookie who is himself in debt with  small town crime lord Meats (Roebuck). Jason’s recovery is holding, but he desperately wants to be in his son Taylor’s (Beck Jones) life more. The trouble is that his ex Madine (Valynn Turkovich), Jason’s stepmother, was awarded custody and will happily put as many walls between Jason and Taylor as possible. Madine’s got justifiable reasons to hate Jason, but she’s also a spiteful jerk who doesn’t care about Taylor’s needs beyond the bare minimum. To make matters worse, Meats decides to call in Jason’s marker. He’s got a week to pay back everything he owes his boss, and he’s still expected to continue his duties as Meats’ bookie in the meantime. 

Jason is struggling, and it does not help that one of his most prominent clients, Benny (Jon Gries) is a sneering wretch of a man who’ll do everything in his power to weasel out of paying Jason. Conversely, another client, the amiable Lester (Jackie Earle Haley), is the closest thing that Jason has to a friend outside of Taylor. Lester, knowing that he’s probably terminally ill and that Jason’s in a bad way, offers his pal a way out. His father was an independent deep-sea explorer who built his own diving bell, and during one of his adventures found and swiped a stash of gold doubloons, now valuable enough to clear Jason’s debts to Meats and Madine, provided that Lester and Jason’s contact Marcus (the late, great Tony Todd) can find a buyer for them. Madine and her dopey would-be country singer boyfriend Ash (Taylor Cross) want to get one over on Taylor. Benny wants to get one over on Meats. Meats wants his money. Jason just wants to raise Taylor in peace.

Tuesday’s Flu is well acted, with Haley and Gries as the standouts. Gries is marvelously oily and despicable, a desperate creep whose ego would never let him believe that his actions would catch up to him. Haley’s warmly eccentric, a friend many would be lucky to have even if they weren’t in straits as dire as the ones Jason’s caught in. Roebuck’s craft as a director is solid, particularly when it comes to attempted crimes going sideways and spiraling. Screenwriters Brian and Stephen Parri’s script, though, regularly ignores potentially interesting complications (i.e. Madine being an awful person but with legitimate cause to dislike Jason for having burned through her life savings gambling) in favor of the warm-hearted tough-guy cliches that drive Jason. Too often, Tuesday’s Flu sticks to the small-town-crime-story formula. It’s a competent execution of that formula, but the colorful flourishes (the doubloons and diving bell) show a stronger, more idiosyncratic film that never comes to be. It’s Fine, and nothing more.

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