Christmas movies aren’t typically subtle, but when the right filmmaker wields the holiday, it adds a wonderful note of underlying urgency. It’s a precipice, the end of one year and the beginning of the next; you either know exactly what you’re doing on that day in that time in your life, or you don’t. The Baltimorons, the first film in over a decade from low-budget director/producer extraordinaire Jay Duplass, is about people who don’t know what to do with themselves as the melancholic glow of the holiday season settles in around them. It’s about two wanderers who thought they knew what their lives should be, only to have them upended by each other. Christmas is not the plot, but the existential cliff to which two people hang, unexpectedly side by side. With two great performances and a pervading sense of warmth, that’s enough to make The Baltimorons one of the year’s best comedies, and in its own way, a new Christmas classic.
Michael Strassner, who co-wrote the film with Duplass, plays Cliff, a recovering alcoholic getting his life back on track with the help of his fiancée, Brittany (Olivia Luccardi). A former sketch comedy and improv performer who gave up the gig after a crisis, he’s trying to settle down, get a regular job, and spend a normal Christmas with his future in-laws. But before he can even get in the door on Christmas Eve, a chipped tooth sends Cliff on a desperate hunt for an emergency dentist, which he finds in Didi (Liz Larsen), a workaholic with issues of her own.
Didi, a divorcee who’s used to hosting Christmas Eve for her daughter and grandchild, just found out that her ex-husband is stealing her holiday spotlight with a spontaneous wedding to his younger girlfriend, leaving her alone on the holiday. Cliff, not so eager to return to the stiff, restrictive environs of a family Christmas, overhears her predicament and offers to buy her dinner. This unlikely moment of connection sets off a sprawling nightlong adventure.
Those familiar with Duplass’ work, particularly his contributions to mumblecore, will recognize the setup. Two people perched uncomfortably atop lives they can’t quite settle into, desperate for a release, unexpectedly jarred into action by each other’s tensions. It’s no accident that one of the first things on the soundtrack is the piano music of Vince Guaraldi memorialized in A Charlie Brown Christmas, because Cliff enters the film as a living, breathing Charlie Brown.
Cliff is a nice enough guy. He cares about things, he wants stuff to work out, but somehow he just can’t get comfortable despite his affable nature and his commitment to making his life better. He shares virtually nothing in common with the more hardened and sharpened Didi, but something in his softness appeals to her, warms her. Strassner and Larsen approach their characters with naturalism, adding a vulnerability and verve that takes their work beyond the stumbling, “act casual” work that permeates so many films like this one. They might have stepped out of Harold And Maude, or Chris Columbus’ sublime Only The Lonely, hitting the unconventional love story angle in ways too charming to resist.
And while those who love such unconventional love stories (romantic or platonic) will certainly find familiar beats, the greatest success of The Baltimorons, aside from how effortlessly funny it is, lies in its focused thematic weight, wrapped up in its setting. It would be easy for a film like this to immerse itself in Yuletide cynicism, to give in to the notion that Christmas is a commercially enforced illusion, but Duplass and Strassner keep the holiday pageantry in the background. It’s not about the holidays so much as it’s about what these two people really wish their lives were like, something the last month of the year always reinforces. Yet, those long dark Christmases of the soul are also full of potential. In its subtle warmth and its tight focus on character, The Baltimorons becomes a film all about those nights becoming a little shorter.
Director: Jay Duplass
Writer: Jay Duplass, Michael Strassner
Starring: Michael Strassner, Liz Larsen, Olivia Luccardi
Release Date: September 5, 2025
