Actress/musician Juliette Lewis would seem perfectly suited to play a disaffected former punk rocker stuck in the suburbs raising an infant.
And she is. But director Jen McGowan, in her feature debut, keeps Lewis’ freak flag at half-mast.
Even when her character, Kelly, dyes her hair Manic Panic turquoise in a fit of ’90s nostalgia, it’s changed back to its normal brunette not 10 minutes later.
Kelly, once the bassist for a riot grrrl band called (believably) Wetnap, is deeply bored with new motherhood and neglected by her workaholic husband (Josh Hopkins).
When she makes the acquaintance of a prickly, wheelchair-bound high-school senior named Cal (Jonny Weston), the unlikely friendship is a release for both.
The odd-couple dynamic is a familiar one, but holds promise in the early acts of Amy Lowe Starbin’s screenplay.
Kelly, trying to adjust to small-town life, attempts to befriend moms in a more appropriate age group and finds them icy and dull; Cal, in contrast, radiates the kind of unironic energy that reminds Kelly of her youth. Soon, she’s busting out cassette tapes of her old band for him, fueling his crush, while he’s trying to convince her that her absentee husband is either a sellout or a cheater.
“Kelly & Cal” is at its best when focused on Lewis and Weston, the latter of whom capably holds his own as an angry young man trying to reimagine his life without the use of his legs.
Lewis, in an ironic twist, plays almost uniformly low-key despite her raucous rock past — except for one enjoyable scene, which sees her sporting Docs with a prom dress and wielding a can of spray paint.
Overall, though, the film drifts into boilerplate paces. Cybill Shepherd, as Kelly’s mother-in-law, shows up to drop wisdom about how babies change a marriage; Lucy Owen, as Kelly’s career-minded sister-in-law, gives her a speech about being jealous of Kelly’s life.
Eventually, Kelly must confront Cal’s feelings for her while helping him move forward in life, on wheels. Any intriguingly subversive leanings are, like Kelly’s shimmering blue hair, abandoned for trappings of a more mainstream sort.