Gayle Rankin, left, as Marissa, Kyle Marvin as Kyle, Michael Angelo Covino, right, as Mike in Michael Angelo Covino's The Climb.Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics / Mongrel Media
- The Climb
- Directed by Michael Angelo Covino
- Written by Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin
- Starring Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin
- Classification R; 94 minutes
Cleverly structured and popping with realistic dialogue, The Climb is a bromance comedy of uncommonly high aspirations. And if the message is simple – when one falls down, it’s best to get right back up – nothing else about the film is.
Through a series of well-crafted vignettes and excellent segues, director/writer/co-star Michael Angelo Covino and writer/co-star Kyle Marvin explore a dysfunctional but weirdly durable friendship. They play life-long friends – brothers in every way but blood – who are co-dependent and quite unlike. One is sad, toxic and aggressively selfish; the other, submissive and tolerant to a fault. Their relationship survives shocking betrayals and brutal honesty.
Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin play life-long friends who explore a dysfunctional but weirdly durable friendship.Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics / Mongrel Media
The humour is mostly dark and dry, which makes the occasional laugh-out-loud moments all the funnier, and the unexpected artful Euro-cinema interludes all the more delightful. Life is an uphill battle says The Climb, a film that gets better as it goes, even if life often does not.
The Climb opens Nov. 13 in select theatres across Canada
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