Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge directs and co-writes this sci-fi slacker comedy which sees a trio of stoner wastrels hoping to investigate what happened to the father of one of their number, who mysteriously disappeared many years ago and is presumed dead. It’s a slightly frustrating experience, because the film has got loads going for it but could be just that little bit better. So many of the ingredients are right: it’s nicely shot and directed, and the casting feels on point – it’s not so much that you buy these evidently non-teenage actors as teenagers, but that their presence is part of a noble tradition of adults playing teens in films. It’s as cosily familiar to anyone who came of age in the 1990s as baggy skate trousers and a band hoodie.
This sense of cultural time capsule extends to the characters themselves: they feel like 90s teenagers rather than modern-day ones, and that’s presumably a bonus for anyone drawn hither by DeLonge’s status as guitarist and singer for one of the more enduring bands of the pop punk explosion of that decade. These kids are crude and puerile, and it’s somehow fun to see the American Pie-type kid in a contemporary setting; certainly anyone with a fondness for that particular type of high school movie will inhale a pleasant hit of nostalgia without having to think too hard about whether there’s much value here.
Where the film struggles is plot and structure, with events alternating between meandering and slightly overdetermined. The big tonal shifts are not necessarily a problem per se – it ought to be perfectly possible for a film to sustain childlike awe and wonder at the magic of the universe and also have a scene where a man gets apparently pissed on by Bigfoot – but there are some bumpy transitions between the different modes. It’s the sort of film that spends its rather too long runtime trying to be Stranger Things at some points, and at others is more closely aligned with Jackass, when it really ought to be a tighter, more casual affair.
Monsters of California is on digital platforms from 7 July