Sweet Parents: Dour tale of young New Yorkers seeking old money to launch their careers could have worked as farce

By Jim Slotek

Rating: C

Sweet Parents is a mopey drama set in the New York of sitcom fame – where young people complain about being broke while eating at restaurants, and about their “dumpy’ flats, which would cost a broker’s salary in rent.

It’s missing the laugh track, though, which would have been a better way to go – considering that the movie’s premise would have worked much better as farce.

Gabby and Will, a couple in need of career cash - but at what cost?

The term “Sweet Parents” here is a gender-free descriptor for what has perennially been known as “a Sugar Daddy.” Gabby (Leah Rudick) is a sculptor who doesn’t seem to have ever sold anything. Her partner Will (together nearly a decade, and still referred to as “my boyfriend”) is a chef who has worked in 20 since-defunct restaurants and is still as far as ever from realizing his dream of owning his own resto.

What Gabby and Will (played by director/writer David Bly) need are sponsors with deep pockets. The sexual association of this perfectly normal practice is set early. While sharing drinks with Will’s best friend Josh (Chris Roberti), Josh’s green-haired hey-I’m-gay friend Pierce (Jacob Mondry) swans into the room showing off his bling and his platinum card, declaring the wonders of his sugar daddy relationship and the “sweet parents” phenomenon in general.

In a fun movie, with more arch sensibilities, this would get Gabby and Will to thinking, and maybe even scheming. Instead, Gabby laughs and Will gets mad. And the precise things Pierce was talking about happen anyway, entirely and improbably by accident. (In real life, Gabby and Will would simply move to Jersey to save on rent, like other artists).

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

While tinkering with a current sculpture over coffee in a friend’s coffee bar, Gabby is approached by a rich, Brazilian architect named Oscar (Casey Biggs) who admires her work and offers to introduce her to big-deal gallery owners. There seem to be no strings attached, but soon she is effectively Oscar’s date at openings and such. Given that he appears to be a gentleman, she thinks nothing of it when, at the spur of the moment, he invites her to join him that night for a two-week trip to Brazil.

Sweet Parents is a “weird” movie in a not-good way – ie. people tend to act counterintuitively, as if they’re from another planet – Gabby expects Will to be cool about it when she says she’s going off on an extended trip with another man, like tonight!  While Will is eventually revealed as a jerk, Gabby’s naivete should be illegal. 

But, as improbably as the first encounter, Will’s cooking attracts the attention of a rich “consultant” named Guylaine (Barbara Weetman), who happens to have enough disposable income to invest in him.

Will’s pursuit of Guylaine’s money, with its intimation of “with benefits,” seems more motivated by spite than a good idea. Still, even when Sweet Parents’ plot dishes up an absurd situation that any writer would love to hit out of the park, (a double dinner date with Gabby, Will and their sponsors) it misses the opportunity to add something antic to the ennui.

The acting is all on point. Rudick and Bly do seem like a couple who’ve been together a long time (unfortunately, with all the squabbling that comes with it). As “sweet parents” go, Biggs and Weetman seem perhaps too good – too good-looking, charismatic and smart to be buying the attention of callow younger people. In fact, they kind of belong together. They’re also the only likeable characters in the movie, which I’m guessing wasn’t the intention.

But Sweet Parents’ intentions are a mystery. The movie dances around whether sex really is part of Will and Gabby’s “sweet parent” relationships, with some cozy scenes but nothing obvious.

If the relationships are platonic, the lesson seems to be that any kind of support or help from a member of the opposite sex is an automatic threat to your personal relationship, and that career success and romantic happiness are mutually exclusive. Or something.

Sweet Parents. Directed and co-written by David Bly. Starring David Bly, Leah Rudick and Casey Biggs. Available on demand on most platforms, Tuesday, November 24.