The phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats” certainly applies to the world of entertainment, where featured and recurring players on hit television shows often find themselves the recipient of goodwill “skip-passes” that pull them out of the grind of Hollywood auditions and land them a series of plum offers, or even a lead role or two in their own indie project. Witness one such example in the form of Cora Bora, a new drama-comedy which stars Hacks breakout supporting player Megan Stalter.

On that award-winning Max show, starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, Stalter has enjoyed success as Kayla, an aggressively unhelpful assistant to series co-creator and multi-hyphenate Paul W. Downs’ manager character, Jimmy. The fact that she’s the daughter of Jimmy’s boss helps protect Kayla, even as her inappropriate behavior leads to all sorts of exasperation and complications. While not at all the focal point of the series, this third season did flesh out some of the background and details informing Kayla’s behavior, even as she remained for the most part as frustrating as ever.
Cora Bora, directed by Hannah Pearl Utt, affords Stalter the opportunity to branch out and stretch a bit, and the results are decidedly mixed. The film opens in Los Angeles, California, where singer-songwriter Cora is living a somewhat aimless life, performing air-quote acoustic gigs at coffeeshops booked by a manager, Cristina (Chrissie Fit), who is more interested in developments in her own personal life than dealing with her client’s fragile ego.

Cora is bisexual (Thomas Mann pops up as a one-night stand who believes the Earth is flat) and in an open relationship with a longtime girlfriend, Justine (Jojo T. Gibbs), who still lives back in Portland, Oregon. After initially evidencing little interest in a party being held for Justine’s impending graduation from graduate school, Cora makes the impulsive decision to return to Portland and surprise her partner.
On the plane, while trying to take his first class seat, Cora meets Tom (The Good Place’s Manny Jacinto), and upon landing she finds out that another woman, Riley (Ayden Mayeri), has moved in with Justine. As she tries to unpack some of her self-sabotaging behavior and figure out where (and with whom) she wants to be in life, Cora slowly comes to a realization fit for a Taylor Swift song — i.e., “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.”

Utt made her directorial debut with Before You Know It, which debuted in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. A New York-set drama-comedy about a dysfunctional and codependent family in which Utt co-starred with co-writer Jen Tullock, while backed up by a high-profile supporting cast that included Mandy Patinkin, Judith Light, Mike Colter and Alec Baldwin, the movie was not widely seen. Nevertheless, it connected as a fairly promising little calling card-type film, and displayed an adroitness in juggling multiple tonalities.
This is all worth mentioning because Cora Bora has the same opportunity to showcase both ribaldry and poignancy, but largely fails to do so. The movie’s failure to achieve genuine lift-off, though, doesn’t land at the feet of Utt. She oversees a solid low-budget technical package, with cinematographer Senda Bonnet capturing the nooks and crannies of cramped spaces in evocative fashion. Good original music, as well as a score, from indie artist Miya Folik also helps imbue the film with a credibly lived-in, loose-limbed liveliness that feels authentic to the background and personality of its main character.

The appearance of plenty of recognizable faces from the world of comedy (Darrell Hammond appears as Cora’s father, and Margaret Cho and Chelsea Peretti pop up in single-scene cameos) lends Cora Bora the imprimatur of “Next Big Thing,” or at least the vague feeling of such. But (in bummer news for Stalter), the film, while written by Rhianon Jones, actually feels more like the work of a multi-hyphenate who has scripted their own starring vehicle, if that criticism makes sense. Basically it feels slapdash, doesn’t have an abundance of supporting characters on which it can rely, and abandons shrewdly insightful dialogue to let visual choices (like Cora’s wardrobe, in the form of her ever-present leopard-print jacket) do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of character shading.
The biggest swing and miss, though, comes in the form of a late-breaking stab at evoking sympathy which falls flat. After presenting its title character as largely oblivious to the concerns of others, a user and borderline sexoholic, in its third act the movie fills in the particulars of exactly why Cora is a solo act, via a long monologue. It’s meant to be the big, cathartic moment that makes viewers wrestle with their preconceptions and judgments of the character, but it doesn’t connect in large part because it occurs around characters who don’t really know or have a history with Cora.
 
Some throwaway jokes work, but with the relative weakness (or at least shallowness) of its screenplay, one can’t particularly fault Stalter for attempting to fill in all the quiet moments or spaces in any given scene. She delivers a less manic and exhausting version of her Hacks persona, even if in certain ways her character feels somewhat iterative of Kayla — governed by a self-centeredness that informs a sense of shambolic theatricality. 

Our Rating

Summary
Cora Bora is fine if somewhat forgettable as an early twenty-something coming-of-age tale. In terms of Stalter’s future as a potential comedic lead, though, the jury remains out.