‘The Send-Off’ Review – Send In The Clown

The entertainment industry is full of toxic people surrounded by circles of apologists, standing at odds with those they’ve helped abuse and alienate. Dan Richards, former child star, receives a distressing phone call amid a tumultuous episode of clinical depression. Whatever future he had been planning for himself has now become impossible; instead, his next plan shifts to moving back to his home state of Florida to live with his parents. On a whim, he puts together a party of his best friends to surround himself with and eventually makes an announcement to them about what has been going on.

The news Dan delivers is at once heartbreaking for all those who showed up for him and serves as an excuse for himself to spiral once more, drinking himself into a stupor multiple times before the festivities come to an end for him. The Send-Off offers candid moments between people during this party that show how each friend of Dan’s really feels about him, even in an environment where the performance of denial and false happiness reigns.

And we get a mixture of true honesty and patronization over the course of the film — which takes place entirely during the day & night of the party — that nearly everyone is guilty of. One of his friends, in conversation about a series Dan has won an Emmy for, remarks that it’s about people who work in film & TV, remarking that people in the industry love seeing things being made about people working in film & TV. He has a point, and there has been a long, carefully crafted way people have been portrayed as what it looks like to work in these industries on camera. But filmmaker John-Michael Powell’s eye diverts to things more commonly hidden in the shadows that we have only recently become aware of as a society. Powell has put together a fascinating debut in his writing and directorial efforts.

Dan places a lot of value and meaning in inviting his ex-girlfriend Alex to the party, who arrives reluctantly. She finds a somewhat kindred spirit also at Dan’s shindig, and eventually leads off into a B-plot that never feels like it detracts from what Powell is aiming to do — instead it intensifies where the end of the night leads. While Dan gets increasingly unhinged over the course of the evening, others become more at risk from his behavior as Dan’s dark side emerges at an exponential rate.

The Send-Off manages to delve into Dan’s deep-seated mental illness and shows how toxic personalities entrap those unaware. But moments of brilliant humor peek through like a sewing needle through jet-black fabric, and the things that may generate a chuckle or two may stick in your head a while after with a more concentrated punch. The humor operates on a spectrum that wheels from light-hearted jabs, to prop-driven gags, and setting on the horizon of red humor (as filmmaker Tobe Hooper put it in describing his Texas Chain Saw Massacre).

The Send-Off is not a film that needs closer examination but does offer how the cycle of power in Hollywood can be subverted, albeit on a smaller scale by those within the cogs of its deathly machines. It is shockingly obvious where the film goes, and it takes pride in showing its hand as an interview with Dan Richards intercuts the events of the present day, showing how great the distance between the performance he puts on and the cold reality really is until the credits roll.

The Send-Off is currently available On Demand courtesy of Cranked Up Films.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9siC83sAn8]