California King – Film Review

In his directorial debut, Eli Stern delivers a comedy that relishes its own sense of wild miscalculation in the form of California King. Part absurdist buddy romp, part romantic farce, and part low-stakes crime spree, the film unfolds like a shaggy-dog story told by someone with a knack for misadventure—and a fondness for secondhand couches and early-2000s stoner comedies. With an energetic cast led by Travis Bennett, Jimmy Tatro, Victoria Justice, and Joel McHale, California King is messy, frequently illogical, and often very funny—if you’re on its strange wavelength.

At the center of the chaos is Perry (Travis Bennett), a soft-spoken, anxiety-ridden mattress store manager whose life seems to be going nowhere fast. Perry is the kind of guy who has dreams, but no real plan to make them happen—until an ill-conceived opportunity presents itself. That opportunity? Impressing his childhood crush Lynette (Victoria Justice), a confident and charming woman whose attention Perry has never been quite able to earn.

Desperate and flailing, Perry hatches a plan with his brash and impulsive best friend Wyatt (Jimmy Tatro): they’ll stage a fake kidnapping involving Lynette’s younger brother, hoping Perry can swoop in as the unlikely hero. In classic screwball fashion, the plan goes immediately and irreversibly wrong, transforming their harmless scheme into a genuine crime spiral involving real kidnappers, local criminals, the police, and a web of deceptions spiraling out of their control.

The film takes its cues from 2000s slacker comedies like Pineapple Express and Napoleon Dynamite, leaning into a kind of loser-charm aesthetic. Perry and Wyatt are not exactly sympathetic in their choices—kidnapping, even fake, is a deeply terrible idea—but Travis Bennett and Jimmy Tatro ground their roles with a dopey sincerity. Bennett plays Perry with a blend of neurosis and melancholy that gives the character more depth than the script always allows. Tatro, meanwhile, is in full chaotic-sidekick mode, yelling, improvising, and pushing scenes toward gleeful disaster with well-timed comic energy. Their chemistry is the film’s most consistent source of fun.

Victoria Justice, best known for her teen sitcom roots, is used here as a grounding presence rather than a comedic driver, and she mostly succeeds. Lynette is written somewhat thinly—her motivations are underdeveloped and her character feels more like a goal than a person—but Justice brings enough warmth to sell the film’s romantic beats, even when the script’s logic is on life support. Joel McHale, in a smaller role as Zane, gets to have some fun playing a slick, scheming antagonist type, and while the role doesn’t ask much of him, he delivers with his trademark dry wit.

Where California King stumbles is in its tonal management. The plot escalation from a goofy fake kidnapping to a real crime spree isn’t particularly elegant, and the second half of the film sometimes strains under the weight of its increasingly convoluted hijinks. The comedy veers from dialogue-driven banter to more slapstick set-pieces without always sticking the landing. There are moments that seem to gesture toward a Coen Brothers-like sense of escalating absurdity, but without the narrative tightness or thematic clarity to make the chaos feel deliberate. It’s as if Stern had ten ideas for how to end this story and decided to try all of them at once.

Still, Stern shows clear promise as a comedic director. His eye for setting—the sad, empty mattress store, the grungy back alleys, and dusty suburban streets—gives the film a strong sense of place. He also gets a lot out of his cast, especially when he allows scenes to linger just long enough to find their awkward humor.

Cinematographer Jared Levy keeps things visually sharp despite the film’s modest scale, favoring warm tones and handheld movement to mirror the protagonists’ jittery sense of panic. The soundtrack is playful and eclectic, adding a lo-fi energy to the proceedings, while Stern’s editing, though occasionally jumpy, keeps the pace snappy across the 86-minute runtime.

There are enough funny lines and strange character moments in California King to warrant a watch for fans of low-budget indie comedies with a penchant for the ridiculous. But it’s also a film that feels slightly undercooked, particularly in how it handles its female characters and its third-act stakes. The script wants to build a commentary on desperation, masculinity, and misguided heroism, but it only ever lightly brushes against these ideas, choosing instead to follow the noise.

And that’s okay—California King never promises sophistication, and its best moments come when it fully embraces its status as a shaggy, chaotic comedy. It’s the kind of movie that feels like it was made by a group of friends on a dare, and in that sense, it has charm to spare. But the comedy doesn’t always justify the absurd leaps in logic the plot asks you to make, and some viewers may find themselves checking out before the credits roll.

In the end, California King is an amusing misadventure that showcases Eli Stern’s potential as a comedic storyteller, even if the final product doesn’t quite stick the landing. It’s a mattress-store fever dream of a film—bumpy, off-kilter, and maybe not built to last, but comfortable enough for a quick lie-down.