‘Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia’ Is A Miami Anthology That Can't Avoid Being Shipwrecked [Sundance Review]

Miami is described as “the only city where you can tell a lie at breakfast and it’ll be true by nightfall” during a weird but compelling speech by an ambitious real estate developer in “Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia.” The developer, Jim Cummings (played by Mel Rodriguez from “The Last Man of Earth”) explains his dream of building a new shore-front, phallic-shaped luxury condo tower with his name on it. And it doesn’t matter that there’s a recession, nor does it matter that people have no reason to invest in his name. It certainly doesn’t matter that Miami’s waters are rising, threatening to sink the entire city, or that the largest hurricane in the history of the city is on the horizon, Cummings will keep trying to pitch his condo tower throughout the runtime of ‘Omniboat’ a movie that’s both a love letter to Miami and its citizens and also a weird symphonic mess of an anthology film.

“Omniboat” originated, literally, from a PDF that Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva of the Florida film collective Borscht Corporation used to pitch investors and producers so they could buy a luxury boat to shoot a film on – and also do the kind of hedonistic things you do with a luxury boat. 15 filmmakers including the Daniels (“Swiss Army Man”), Dylan Redford, Hannah Fidell (“A Teacher”), Julian Yuri Rodriguez, Mayer, Leyva and many more, in addition to Phil Lord (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”) who served as a writer/producer but didn’t direct any vignettes, present an interconnected series of shorts tied together by the story of a 47-foot Top Gun Cigarette speedboat.

Wearing its love for Miami on its sleeve, ‘Omniboat’ begins with a history lesson about how the state of Florida was sold to impressionable Midwesterners who bought into the American Dream but found themselves owning tracks of swamplands prone to all kinds of disasters. Nevertheless, through the character of Jim Cummings, the film shows the resilience of the people of Florida and how they fought back against the elements to build the vibrant city of Miami (residents and locals will recognize local sights, as well as references to native legends and folklore).

Of course, “Omniboat” is also a very weird film about a speedboat, and within minutes it becomes clear that it is the closest you’ll get to a film version of the “Florida Man” meme, for better or worse.

The best short within is one where a young rich Miami man (played by Adam Devine) can’t afford the payments on both his monster pick-up truck and his yellow-striped cigarette speedboat that he’s named “Lay ‘n Pipe” following the 2008 recession. Though the film doesn’t specify which filmmaker helmed what, /Film writer Ben Pearson confirmed that this short was written by Phil Lord, which makes perfect sense given its whimsical, nearly child-like humor reminiscent of previous Lord and Miller endeavors like “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” The two vehicles end up forming a romance and also having a baby speedboat. Really. There’s a scene where a speedboat gives birth to a baby speedboat that has big monster truck wheels mounted to its undercarriage (aptly named “Lay ‘n Pipe 2”). Devine is terrific doing a big-screen take on Jason Mendoza from “The Good Place” but all credit should go to the writers, and the boat, whose deadpan delivery makes this short segment one of the funniest comedies at Sundance this year.

Two other notable segments involve a weirdly romantic story where Casey Wilson plays a woman who literally falls in love not with a theme park attraction, but with the boat itself. Likewise, there’s a visually impressive segment where a group of interpretative dancers performs a creatively choreographed modern set-piece where people act like animals in the middle of the everglades.

Sadly, there’s not much else that works. The issue with anthology films, often, is that they can only be as good as their best segment, but they’re always as bad as the worst one. ‘Omniboat’ only really features one great short, and despite it sailing at full speed right off the bat, it quickly loses steam, shipwrecking after just a few of the 15 shorts. While the stories do get crazy— including one last one where Robert Redford voices a dolphin-man deity— they often feel disjointed, with the framing developer story never enough to convincingly glue them together.

Going from a weirdly funny short where Adam Pally and Finn Wolfhard try their best to take the boat out on a ride and befriend rapper and major Miami figure Uncle Luke, to a serious and timely short about Cuban refugees using the boat to get to the U.S., to a tense thriller where Jason David Frank plays a diver fighting against a giant sea monster, ‘Omniboat’ mostly just leaves you confused and exhausted.

While some gems herald the arrival of new and exciting talent, ‘Omniboat’ just doesn’t justify its overly long runtime, and its attempt to hide who exactly was in charge of each segment simply serves to blur the whole thing together anonymously, highlighting how jarring and disjointed the project feels. What started as a magical, funny, and sweet tribute to Miami ends up capsizing faster than an auspicious luxury boat and monster truck marriage that quickly ends in an irreparable break-up. [D+]

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