Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Red Rocket’ on VOD, in Which Simon Rex Tears Up the Screen as a Porn Star on the Prowl

Historically, I’ve hated NSYNC, but I love love love Red Rocket (now on VOD). Context is king, of course, and director Sean Baker’s use of “Bye Bye Bye” in his latest film wholly redeems the saccharine pop song, which functions as the recurring theme for an irredeemable shithead played by Simon Rex (who deserves a dozen career revivals for his performance). And this is where the hack in me begs you to say hi hi hi to Baker’s follow-up to 2017 stunner The Florida Project, Rex leading an equal-parts unsettling and uproarious comedy about a charismatic shyster and the women he exploits.

RED ROCKET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “Oh my shit.” Those are the first words out of Lil’s (Brenda Deiss) mouth when she sees Mikey (Rex) on her doorstep. He’s her son-in-law. He’s supposed to be in Los Angeles, getting paid to have sex with women while cameras roll, but here he is, in the flesh, on her battered doorstep in Texas City, materialized after a number of estranged years. He’s fresh off a bus, no luggage, $22 in his pocket, a fresh and tender shiner under his eye, and you almost expect him to be missing a shoe. Mikey treats the reunion like something that should be trumpeted, like he should be greeted with hugs – and this is the way he works, a weasel who snakes himself into people’s lives like a total louse. He walks on his toes and talks a mile a minute and is funny and cut and weathered in all the right ways. Lexi (Bree Elrod) is still technically his wife, and she lives in a grungy little house with her mom, watching a lot of TV and smoking a lot of cigarettes, pretty much doing f—-all, and if it seems dull and numbing and sad and depressive to us, it soon becomes clear that she needs Mikey and his brand of excitement back in her life like she needs another hole in her head.

But she lets him back in anyway. He’s full of promises, that it’ll be temporary and he’ll help out around the house and find a job and help pay the bills, and can he just have a shower, just a quick shower. They let him wash up and Lexi lends him a clean shirt. He sleeps on the couch and awakes earlier than he’d like, to Lil turning on the TV to watch an annoying judge show at an uncomfortable volume. He bicycles off beneath a Donald Trump campaign billboard and fails to procure several rudimentary foodservice gigs because of a 17-year gap in his resume, when he was self-employed and – well, he explains to prospective employers, he’s a porn star who’s won a few awards and if you Google Mikey Saber, there he is, and even when he’s laying his cards on the table and telling the truth, he’s still a slippery eel. The interviews bear no fruit, so he hey-remember-mes Leondrea (Julia Hill), who blinks a few times and vaguely recalls how he used to hustle hash for her a couple decades ago; her son went to high school with Mikey and beat him up after a disagreement on the basketball court. She gives him some dirt weed and off he goes.

Mikey shoots the breeze with Lil and Lexi’s neighbor, Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), the embodiment of a devoted and non-ironic 2020s Staind fan who remembers that time Lexi was babysitting him and she and Mikey got caught banging in the other room. Lonnie likes to brag about how he knew Mikey and Lexi before they were “famous” porn stars; he followed their careers closely and seems pretty impressed by Mikey’s cra-zee behind-the-scenes showbiz anecdotes. Mikey sells enough joints to pacify Lil and Lexi with an all-expenses-paid trip to the Donut Hole for as many doughnuts they can eat and as much coffee as they can drink, and before you know it, he’s paying all the rent, making Lexi come on the regular and mowing the lawn. Lil really doesn’t want Mikey to be up to his usual shenanigans, because, she tells him, the way things currently are prevents Lexi from “taking clients” – but I’m not sure she realizes that a heart-to-heart with this guy is a heart-to-whatever-he’s-got-besides-that. But she can hope, and he’s endeared himself to the point that Lil asks what he’d prefer for dinner, shit on a shingle or chicken fried steak?

All of this is a smokescreen of course, because that trip to the Donut Hole was monumental for Mikey. Tonging sweets behind the counter is a young woman who calls herself Strawberry (Suzanna Son), yes, Strawberry, and Mikey just barely stops himself from turning into that cartoon wolf with the hearts in his eyes and the tongue that leaps out of its mouth with mighty lustful fury. She’s days away from her 18th birthday and sometimes dresses like Raggedy Ann, but all growed up. Oh boy. She’s susceptible to Mikey’s charms, which aren’t just an extension of his horndog urges, but his professional ambition. He tells her she could be a star, and she believes him.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Red Rocket builds on Baker’s Tangerine both thematically and stylistically, with maybe a nod to Boogie Nights. Baker also throws in some wild, ragged-edge energy that brings one back to – oh boy – Spring Breakers. Side note: Strawberry’s rendition of “Bye Bye Bye” reinvigorates a featherweight pop song like none since Elizabeth Moss transformed Bryan Adams’ cornball smash “Heaven” into pure heartbreak in Her Smell.

Performance Worth Watching: Make that TWO dozen career revivals. Rex is a sleazy, comic powerhouse here, playing the most profoundly selfish movie character in recent memory. Mikey Saber is a guy who schemes on the fly, pulling everything out of his ass and fast-talking his way into people’s lives so he can exploit them. He’s like a massage therapist who rubs your shoulders and calves just right and might surprise you with a happy ending but will absolutely make off with your wallet. Rex is electric.

Memorable Dialogue: “Ain’t no lie, baby bye bye bye.” – NSYNC and Lexi and Strawberry, but not all at the same time

Sex and Skin: Tons of it, male and female unclothedness, hard-R rutting. And if you think Mikey Saber is the type of character who’d end up jumping out of a window naked and running down the street in full swing, well, bullseye.

Our Take: Oh my shit is RIGHT. Red Rocket crackles with vitality, fueled by Rex’s screwball crackpot nut-meat charm-spiel performance, which is perfection, and puts us in that should-I-stay-or-should-I-go uneasy morally-conflicted headspace where we’re rooting for Mikey’s happiness at the same time we’re appalled by his exploitative calculations. That’s why I recommend seeing the film twice, because the first is a cathartic laugh riot rich with slam-bang comedic left turns, and the second is an unsettling character study about a man who’s left a lot of damaged people (most of them presumably women) in his wake.

Lexi’s story creeps into the margins, and we piece together how she ended up washed up and washed out, depressed in front of the TV all day, occasionally smoking meth with her mother. Is Strawberry next? In her first significant acting role, Son proves to be a find, bringing complexity to a character defined by her naivete and the discovery of her raw sexual power. Yet she’s young, and susceptible to Mikey’s grooming, via his facile, multi-talented, multitasking tongue. We go from feeling sad that Mikey always gets his ass kicked to thinking that he deserves to always get his ass kicked.

What keeps the film charged up, alive on the third rail, is how Rex assures there’s one corn kernel of truth in each of Mikey’s massive loaves of shit – and Baker’s ability to authentically capture gritty-class small-town coastal Texas, framing the story with oil-refinery smokestack plumes and dumpy bus stops in the background. The director’s point-of-view flirts with the ethically venal “male gaze” of his protagonist, but ultimately condemns Mikey as a creep who’s got it coming. We can sit back and laugh at his sweaty hustle, which is as effective as it is pathetic, but Red Rocket is no redemption story; it’s crucial to realize that the movie isn’t about him, but rather the people who know him best, and have had enough of his shit.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Red Rocket isn’t just crazy, funny, sexy and smart – it might just be the best film of 2021.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.