Ned Ehrbar

(On TV, June 2022) If The California No wanted to be a comedy, it did have the proper set-up for it as our protagonist “discovers” that he’s in an open marriage. (Note: If that happens to you in real life, you’re not in an open marriage – your spouse is being disingenuously forthright in telling you they’re cheating.)  There are many ways this premise could have been reused for a comedy of raunch and revenge, but writer-director Ned Ehrbar is not interested in these things here. At all. Instead, the premise becomes a launching point for a character study of a sadly detestable protagonist – a mopey, depressed, incompetent, whining kind of guy who’s intolerable after two minutes – let alone 84 of them. Shambolic in all aspects of his life, he impassively goes from one crisis to another, loses his job after turning a press junket interview with a well-known actor into a fight, doesn’t respond to the lustful signals broadcast by a female friend, stumbles in bed with another woman, deceives his way into a celebrity profile that turns sour… and then the film ends because satisfying ending are not for you, plebeian. Cheaply made and even more cheaply conceived, The California No impresses more by how it wastes its assets (Los Angeles being the least of it) in the service of an obnoxious effort more than anything else. I did like Tracie Thoms (as I usually do) and can’t quite fault Jesse Bradford and Brecklin Meyer for having small roles here. But the rest of the film? Almost intolerable even as background noise. The film ends more than concludes, but don’t worry – you’ll feel so little about it all that it won’t matter.