Director: Peter Blackmann
MPAA Rating: NR
If you’ve seen Peter Blackmann’s previously released short film, Stalled Love, you’ll find yourself in familiar territory with his latest, The Package. This 8-minute vignette revolves around a receptionist at a law firm receiving a mysterious pink package from a courier with instructions to give it to one of the partners. Speculation begins creeping in as she and one of the other partners make guesses as to what would be housed in a small, elongated, vibrating box.
Like Stalled Love, the film stars Sarah Nadeau as the receptionist, Lori. While still slightly annoying, her character in this short is not nearly as repugnant, and comes off as cute and charming. It’s amusing to hear her and the other partner dance around what they really think is inside the package, but the humor is never laugh out loud funny.
The dialogue is quick and witty, but never feels natural, and much of the delivery from the characters feels stilted and forced. This is the type of film that would benefit from ad-libbing, since it’s clear the director is putting a lot of emphasis on the cast having organic, water cooler type conversations.
While I knew the contents of the package certainly wouldn’t contain what we all thought it would, I still found myself intrigued as to what was actually in the box. Although the big reveal isn’t anything Earth shattering, it still provides a satisfying conclusion.
Rather than pushing this as a short film though, it seems that Youtube or Funny or Die would be a better fit for these little movies. They don’t really play well as self-contained films, and would probably work better being marketed as sketches and distributed online. This isn’t implying that one medium is somehow better than the other; it’s simply an observation in where the audience for this type of film may lie.
The Package is a breezy little comedy that is light on laughs, but is still an enjoyable and entertaining watch. Blackmann proved in Stalled Love that he has a knack for writing good conversational dialogue, and he proves it once again here. The quick runtime leaves little room for extraneous junk, making the film brisk and to the point. Although the punch line at the end was a bit corny, it didn’t really detract from the overall entertainment value, leaving The Package a slight, but passable comedy short.
