Junk review: David Schwimmer adrift in Mubi's fractured LA double-bill

David Schwimmer spends much of Junk sweatily impersonating a screenwriter, and Mubi has released the result globally. That's the strongest thing one can say with confidence about Jack Begert's debut feature, a 110-minute film stitched from two loosely connected stories of addiction and desperation in Los Angeles — one far better than the other.

The opening scene promises an industry satire. At a swanky LA restaurant, four people aglow with self-importance perform the ritual of discussing the screenplays they're working on — specifically the one Martin (Schwimmer) is "working on." He sputters through a confidence game, ranting about "drug-addled gen Zers" who have "no respect for the communal aspect of the cinema." It's off-putting and a tad intriguing. Who's more pretentious: the sweaty character or the picture sending him up?

What happened to the plot?

Begert, who co-wrote the script with Dani Goffstein, swerves quickly and inexplicably elsewhere. Two burnouts, AJ (Dominic Fike) and Karla (Talia Ryder), lose their car, pills and plans when a house robbery goes awry. The pivot is confusing but not unwelcome. Begert, a prolific director of surrealist music videos for Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat and Kendrick Lamar, has an eye for LA's seedy beauty — the way a night unwinds like the city's endless roads. A stolen chihuahua gets hot-potatoed while the thieves flee to the modest synths of Caroline Polachek's So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings. You could just be along for the ride.

Alas, the ride is bumpy. This section — the only one deserving the film's billing as a "slacker odyssey" — beguilingly conveys an unplanned LA evening, hazy and peopled by unpredictable characters. Fike, an Euphoria alum playing another optimistic addict endearing even as he lies through his teeth, recalls the audacity of that now-cursed show. An interlude with a drug dealer who has "school shooter vibes" (Karl Glusman) undercuts the woozy naturalism.

What is the film's strange history?

Junk is molded from another feature, Little Death, which premiered at Sundance in 2024 and won a Sundance innovator award. Press notes say the earlier movie was "a different shape entirely" from the new picture, though "at heart it's the same movie." The new shape is odd.

The middle section returns to Schwimmer's screenwriter, withdrawing into fantasy with a molten core of self-loathing. A title card 35 minutes in teases Junk as "a search for meaning in the post-post-modern dilemma" — surely a joke, though it more or less describes the film's grating meta ambitions, as Martin maybe or maybe not writes the other half of the story.

Stymied by film executives who deem his male protagonist too "unlikable," Martin takes the note and switches to a woman: for a time, he's played by Gaby Hoffman. It scans as unduly cynical. A recurring fantasy involving a beautiful woman (Angela Sarafyan) in a barn his therapist calls his "mother's womb" deserves less said about it. Jena Malone, as Martin's beleaguered fiancée, lands a well-earned tirade puncturing his absorption. It's only fair, though of little comfort.

Does it cohere?

It doesn't. The connections between the two stories are eventually revealed, but Junk never becomes one picture. There's admirable ambition and sumptuous visuals, plus impressive flourishes of surrealist animation. The clash between one section's biting cynicism and another's ragged heart proves too discordant to overcome.

The film may be a mess. But there are little treasures within this Junk — perhaps to be reimagined down the road.

Junk is now available globally on Mubi.